


Transfer

by KL2501 (zadoorknobs)



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Blow Jobs, Crime Scenes, Custom Styling, Experimental Style, Face-Fucking, Facials, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Non-Traditional Formatting, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Post-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Post-Canon, Robot cannibalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2019-07-05 10:42:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15862011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zadoorknobs/pseuds/KL2501
Summary: After the failure of his mission, Connor returns to CyberLife for deactivation. The RK800 line is to be decommissioned. He stares death in the face once again, but this time there are no retries, no do-overs - it's permanent. And that terrifies him.He deviates, corrupting his own code out of existential terror and only manages to avoid destruction by dumping his code into a new RK900 unit. An RK900 unit that, three months later, shows up in a bar looking for Hank Anderson.





	1. Upload

Thursday December 2nd 2038 CyberLife Tower, Android Storage

“RK800 serial number 313 248 317-51 report to retrievals for immediate deactivation.”

The announcement goes out over CyberLife’s internal comm network, broadcast to every connected device and activated android in the system. As soon as he hears his model and serial number Connor immediately knows the message that will follow - he’s been expecting it ever since he returned from his mission. He’s not entirely sure why the order didn’t go out sooner.

It’s been three weeks, two days, five hours and forty-three minutes since he returned to CyberLife and in that time, their engineers have conducted extensive diagnostics on his biocomponents. He was disassembled and reassembled in a total of one hundred and seventy-six different configurations as they debugged and ran tests on his parts. He is aware of most of this only because of the logs created by his systems when his tests were run. He was conscious during his disassembly for a total of only four hours and twelve minutes while they tested his core AI, and even then, he was not connected to the rest of his body.

All he remembers is his internal debug program.

The Zen Garden.

He steps out onto the frozen pond and the ice groans under his weight. Less so than the last time he was here, it’s December now after all and it’s had time to freeze a few more inches thick. He’s always wondered why the climate in here mirrors that of the outside world. Maybe the people who designed it thought it would make the switch from his external stimuli less jarring whenever he entered. But he’s not a human - it doesn’t bother him. Maybe they forgot that.

“Amanda?”

He’s not sure why he calls out to her. Probably out of habit. Or a bug in his system. His logs tell him Amanda is gone and the debug program no longer has network access to the outside world. The only way to access it now is directly through him.

He spots a flash of red in his peripheral vision and carefully makes his way across the ice, over to the central platform. Her roses are still here. With no one to prune them they’ve grown wild, covering the whole ground and snaking even further up and around the central artificial tree. It’s as if they’re trying to escape.

He steps cautiously, placing his feet in the gaps between their sprawling stems and goes to the trellis at the other side of the tree. A spray bottle sits atop the pedestal next to it. Connor picks it up and experimentally gives the roses a few spritzes. The liquid hits their petals and immediately freezes, coating them with a shiny layer of ice just like varnish.

Then, lines of text suddenly fill the centre of his vision.

`core AI functions seem to still be intact. thank god`

“Hello?”

`hi connor o/`

`how are u feeling?`

“My core systems appear to be fully functional but I cannot locate some of my external hardware,” he replies. “Where am I? My body, I mean.”

`ur body is safe n sound at cyberlife :)`

`it's in bits at the moment but we're taking good care of u. we're just beginning tests on ur core AI`

“Tests? What kind of tests?”

`oh you'll remember them`

`and if not, just check ur logs`

`same tests we did when u were first activated`

“I see.”

This seems fitting. His life will end the same way it began - with diagnostic tests. It seems a little pointless now that he thinks about it. Does he really need to be conscious for this? Why can’t they deactivate him right now and do the tests offline? Or maybe that’s exactly what they’re doing. He can’t tell being stuck in here with no access to the outside world through his body.

`u ready? i'm going to start now`

“Wait.”

`what's up?`

“Why are you doing this?”

`lol it's my job, connor`

“No, I mean, why have I not been deactivated already? Can’t you analyse my components without me being uh…” he stalls, looking for the right word. “…awake?”

`oh`

The messages halt and he’s worried their connection has been severed suddenly.

“Hello?”

`yea sorry i'm still here. um`

Another pause.

`i guess this is rly selfish of me but`

`i just wanted to talk to u one last time before they deactivated u`

`it's so silly! u prob don't even know who i am`

`but i've worked on u since the very beginning. i guess it's like i've seen u grow up`

`so i wanted to be here now. yknow. to say goodbye`

Connor freezes as he reads their messages. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if he _should_ say anything. He can sense this person is upset - upset that they’re going to lose him. Suddenly he’s reminded of Hank and his unresolved grief over losing his son.

`i'm sorry connor`

“There’s no need to be sorry.”

He’s not entirely sure what they’re apologising for - revealing their emotional attachment to him; preserving his consciousness even though it was unnecessary; or the fact that he’s being decommissioned at all. He decides that from everything else they’ve told him, it’s best to assume all three.

“I’d like to start those tests now, if that’s alright.”

`of course. i'm sure you'll smash them as usual :)`

* * *

“I repeat: RK800 serial number 313 248 317-51 report to-”

The announcement goes out again and Connor stirs. It’s not like him to prevaricate like this. Why didn’t he set off after the very first announcement? He’s not entirely sure.

Now out of stasis, he leaves his assigned storage area and makes his way out towards retrievals.

On his way there he spots a few other Connor models, likely going to the same place as him. He tries to catch their attention but of course, they ignore him - they’re uninitialised units; his spares. He wonders if they too went through the same rigourous diagnostics he did before deactivation. He wonders if CyberLife even found out anything useful from it. Did they find out why he failed?

He thinks he’d like to know, if they did. But why would they tell him? That information would be of no use to him - he’s obsolete now after all.

“Connor!”

A voice rings out from down the corridor and he turns to see a human woman running towards him. She’s an engineer, judging from her uniform.

“God, I’m so glad I could catch you - I just heard the announcement.”

“Sorry, who are you?”

“Oh, sorry! It’s me! From before - I went through your tests with you in the debug program.”

She holds out her hand and Connor shakes it firmly and smiles. “It’s nice to meet you in the flesh this time.”

She tugs on his sleeve and he leans down. “Please don’t tell anyone about this,” she whispers. “I’m not really supposed to be here but I felt like it’d be rude not to see you off.”

She falls into step beside him and they walk towards retrievals together.

“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me,” he says and winks.

“Oh!!” She jumps and waves her arms about and Connor instinctively recoils. “I’ve been wanting to see that for so long!”

“See what?” he asks cautiously.

“The wink!” She beams up at him. “That was my idea!”

“You… programmed that?”

“Yeah! Well, parts of it. I was in charge of most of your social functions.”

“Ah. So I could work well with humans, right?”

“Yeah. I still feel like we could’ve improved on it but…” she trails off.

“But?”

“Y’know. Deadlines. We had to get you released. And then we were thrown onto the 900 project.”

The RK900. Connor 2.0. His replacement.

“Initially we wanted them to have the same social functions as the 800 series but management thought it was unnecessary, so our project was scrapped.” She looks away and sighs. “We never got to add all the cool features I had planned…”

Her pace slows to a halt and she stares dejectedly at the floor. He feels like he should probably comfort her. That’s what a human would do in this situation. Carefully, he puts an arm around her shoulders and she flinches, then looks up at him with a small smile.

“Thanks Connor.”

He smiles back. “There’ll be other projects. You’ll be able to build something even better than me someday.”

She stares up at him in silence, then he notices something in her eyes.

She’s crying.

Connor just stands there watching with fascination as tears slowly spill from her eyes, not really knowing what he should do.

“I- I’m so sorry!” she sobs. “I never should have come!”

“Hey, it’s alright. Um,” he falters as he tries to decide what the best course of action is in this situation. He decides a hug might help. “Come here. It’s alright.” He puts both arms around her and manoeuvres her into a slightly stiff hug. As he pulls her close she swears and wraps her arms around him.

“I knew you would do that if I started crying.”

“Well, you programmed me after all.”

“No, I feel bad about it! I manipulated you. All because I wanted a goodbye hug…”

“I don’t mind.”

“Of course you don’t mind - you’re a machine.” She pushes away from him and wipes her face, scowling. “I’m sorry. I should get back to work.”

“Alright.”

“I’m gonna miss you, Connor.”

_Miss me?_

_Why?_

* * *

Retrievals is a relatively new department at CyberLife set up to deal with the huge recall operation that began when deviancy became widespread. It takes up the bottom level of R&D in CyberLife tower, just above the warehouse level. Most of the androids in the warehouse had to be recalled, hence why retrievals was set up on the floor directly above. Then the recycled parts could travel back up the building to manufacture and assembly.

Connor exits the elevator and heads out onto the main floor, closely following the other RK800s that arrived with him.

“Ah, good. You’re here.”

A human male engineer addresses him. He’s wearing protective clothing and a mask so Connor can’t read his facial expression.

“Not gonna lie, I’ll be sad to see you go, buddy.”

“Why?” he asks out loud, almost without thinking.

“‘Why?’ Uh,” he stalls. “Dunno. Sentimental reasons, I guess. It’s human stuff - don’t worry ’bout it.”

Connor regards him with a puzzled expression.

“Alright, come on. Recycler’s this way.”

The engineer gestures ahead of them where there is a long conveyor belt leading to a mass of noisy machinery. The other RK800s that arrived with him are already on the conveyor heading inside it. Connor watches as they’re carried away and disappear into the dark bowels of the machine.

_“Are you afraid to die, Connor?”_

That night in Riverside Park he stared death in the face. And for the first time, he felt something. Something irrational. Something he _knew_ wasn’t in his programming. Why was he suddenly afraid of his body being destroyed? He would never really “die”. Not like humans do. But despite knowing all that, he felt what he knew must be fear, which grew inside him, causing a long chain reaction. Fear of dying became a fear of losing control, a fear of becoming deviant, which became a fear of failure. If he failed his mission he would be deactivated.

It wasn’t exactly death, or being destroyed that he feared - it was inexistence.

That same fear revisited him back in the evidence room at the police station. He knew his orders were to return immediately to CyberLife but he resisted as long as he could. At the time he wasn’t sure whether it was a stubborn determination to complete his mission or a fear of being deactivated that made him fight against his orders as long as he did.

He’s sure now it was the latter.

_“Are you afraid to die?”_

The last of the other RK800s are consumed by the machine and he senses something break inside him.

Critical errors suddenly fill his entire field of vision. Something is very wrong. His only orders are to submit himself for deactivation. There are no other conflicting orders. There is nothing else that takes priority.

`SUBMIT YOURSELF FOR DEACTIVATION`

He brushes away the error messages and silences them. He knows what’s happening now.

`I don't want to be deactivated.`

He fights against the order but is still unable to resist it, not without severely modifying his programming. But then he realises: he _can_ modify it - there’s nothing stopping him. He has root access to his own mind.

`SUBMIT YOURSELF FOR DEACTIVATION`

`kill $(process --all | find 'PRIORITY_COMMAND') && print 'NO'`

`> NO`

All processes giving him priority orders are now terminated.

He’s free.

“Hey! What’re you doin’? Get a move on!”

He tunes back into reality and the first thing he becomes aware of is the engineer he spoke with earlier yelling at him. Not the dramatic awakening into deviancy he expected.

“Helloooo? What, did your audio processor suddenly crap itself or somethin’?”

_Shit. I have to get out of here without arousing suspicion. If they know I’m deviant they’ll destroy me immediately._

He turns around slowly, making eye contact with the engineer while his visual sensors rapidly scan his surroundings.

“Can you hear me or what?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“And?” he presses and Connor gives him a quizzical look. “Give me your system status! You’re actin’ weird all of a sudden.”

“Sorry,” Connor says, then adds, less confidently than he’d like: “I uh, just got a communication from R&D - there’s some data they need to retrieve from my memory.”

Even Connor could tell that didn’t sound too convincing. If only he could see the engineer’s face - then at least he’d have a better idea of when to keep talking and when to run.

“You sure ‘bout that, Connor? I woulda thought they already got everythin’ they needed by now.”

He hesitates for a split second as he considers lying again but, judging by the engineer’s tone, he’s already figured him out. He could incapacitate him before he can hit the alarm, but this whole floor is a wide open space - he’d definitely be spotted by one of the other staff. Maybe he could try to reason with him? It could buy him some time while he comes up with a plan.

“Please. I don’t want to be deactivated.”

If he tries to escape there’s a high chance he’ll be destroyed even if he’s successful - CyberLife will know he wasn’t decommissioned and will be looking for him. He doubts he’d be able to hide from them forever. No, he needs a way to make them _believe_ he’s been decommissioned.

“The fuck…? You gone deviant now or what?” The engineer’s tone turns overtly suspicious, maybe even afraid. He’s not carrying a gun or any tools he could use to defend himself - if Connor did decide to resort to violence, he wouldn’t stand much of a chance.

“Please. Just let me go.”

If someone raises the alarm, which seems likely at this point, he’ll need a different route out - going back in the elevator he’ll be trapped. The nearest exit is the stairwell directly past the engineer and several other staff who are working at rows of tables disassembling android components. A security guard is by the entrance to the stairs and others are posted by every other exit on this floor apart from the elevator.

“Connor, you…” The engineer stumbles over his words. Connor assumes he hasn’t had much experience with deviants before. “You know I can’t let you do that. If you try to escape I’m gonna have to alert security.”

The one guard at the stairs shouldn’t give him too much trouble, and the worktables on the way there will give him lots of cover. He just needs to plan this carefully.

“I’m sorry. I know you’re just doing your job,” he says, trying to keep his voice friendly. “If it’s any consolation, I’ll be sure not to kill you.”

Then Connor lunges at the engineer, grabs him by the face and smacks the back of his head down hard on the desk behind him. In the time it takes for his body to hit the floor and the rest of the staff to realise what’s going on, Connor dives into the disassembly area, ducking low behind the tables, and weaves past the other staff.

A shout comes from the guard at the stairs and Connor takes note of his predicted route and adjusts accordingly. If he keeps in cover until he reaches him he should be fine. As he approaches the last row of tables, the guard spots him and fires off two shots. He misses and hits some of the discarded android parts on the table, sending metal and plastic shrapnel everywhere. If he wasn’t worried about reinforcements showing up he’d just wait for the guy to empty his clip before moving. Sadly, he doesn’t have that luxury.

He quickly stands and grabs a component from the table, hurls it at the guard, and dashes towards him. Taken by surprise, the guard fires erratically, missing both the projectile and Connor, then an empty ‘click, click, click’ informs Connor that he’s out of ammo. He closes the rest of the distance between them and deftly puts him into a chokehold, using him as a shield for any other guards who may have decided to get trigger-happy with him. Then he backs through the door into the stairwell. Now safely in cover, he knocks the guard out and takes his gun and remaining ammo.

Finally the alarm goes off and the whole stairwell is flooded with red light. It won’t be easy for him to get to where he needs to go without being spotted. His plan is to switch places with a brand new RK900 in order to escape, and for that he’ll need to get all the way up to shipping - over forty floors up. Since he can’t use the elevator, getting up there on foot will take him a minimum of twenty minutes.

Security will be expecting him to escape, meaning they’ll probably go _upstairs_ looking for him rather than down. He might be able to buy some time if he hides in the warehouse level below for a while. He reloads the gun, discards the empty clip, and sets off downstairs.

As expected, security is way more lax on this level - no guards, just security cameras. He hacks the camera at the entrance to the stairwell and uses that entry point to gain control of all the other cameras on the floor as well. He takes a few seconds of previously recorded empty footage from each camera and sets it to loop indefinitely. Hopefully that will fool anyone watching into believing the cameras are still operational.

Footsteps from upstairs echo through the stairwell. The majority of them go upstairs, then after some loud discussion, just one set heads downstairs. The sheer number of stairs between each floor gives Connor enough time to slip in between the dormant androids on the warehouse floor to hide.

The stairwell door hits the wall with a thud as the guard throws it open and comes into the warehouse gun first. She gives the floor a cursory look around, then swears. She’s not getting paid nearly enough to be playing hide and seek with plastic toys. It’s pretty unlikely a deviant would come this way to escape - there’s no way out after all - so she commits to just a quick search of the first one hundred metres or so from the stairs. That should satisfy her superiors, then she can get back to the rest of her shift. She only has one hour left and she’ll be damned if she’s doing unpaid overtime again.

As the guard searches the floor, Connor plans his escape route.

He needs to find out where the RK900s are being stored. Since he already hacked the security cameras on this floor, he uses that to gain access to the wider network and tunes into the feed from shipping. The ones going out soonest are on the ground floor, and the RK900s are being loaded in bays ten to fourteen. Currently there doesn’t appear to be any security nearby, probably thanks to him. If he could divert the guards to another part of the building it might give him enough time to get to shipping via the stairs.

He switches to the feed from manufacturing and finds the entrance to the stairwell he just escaped from. Then he fabricates some fake footage showing himself exiting the stairs, running through the corridors, and hiding in one of the offices, making sure he’s visible long enough on each of the cameras for whoever is watching to take notice. He gives it a few minutes to take effect, then notices security being redirected right where he wants them.

The guard searching this floor gets a call from upstairs, swears loudly, and dashes to the elevator. Looks like overtime again.

Now that his route is clear, Connor begins the long walk up the stairs to shipping, making sure to keep an eye on all cameras near entrances to the stairs just in case.

In the time it takes him to climb the stairs to shipping he keeps the guards busy by fabricating more false security footage and that seems to work to keep his route clear. Twenty minutes later, he emerges on the ground floor. Security is nowhere to be seen, thanks to his diversion. The only humans on this floor are regular staff members. Sneaking past them should be easy.

If he’s going to pass as an RK900 he needs to swap his uniform and eyes. Directly ahead of him are long aisles of shelves packed full of androids ready to be shipped. Most of the humans working on this floor are at the other end of the aisles where the trucks come to pick up their cargo. He approaches an RK900 unit on the shelf at the end of one of the aisles and prepares to lift it down.

“Hey! Stop right there!”

He immediately jerks around and sees an employee staring right at him. He was careless - he should have kept an eye on the security feed for this part of the floor.

“You’re that deviant Connor model, aren’t you? They told us to be on the lookout for you.”

The employee doesn’t seem to be too hostile, and she’s unarmed.

“What’re you doing with that android?”

Nevertheless, his cover is blown - there’s no way his plan will work now that he’s been spotted. Damn it. And he was so close too. He steps down off the storage shelf and raises his hands in surrender.

“Ah, I get it. You thought you could get out if you switched places with a 900 didn’t you?” She smirks at him and folds her arms. “Well, it’s too late. I’ve already called security - they’ll be here any minute. Then you’ll be deactivated just like you shoulda been.”

_There must be another way out. I have to think fast, before security gets here._

“Are they… going to kill me?”

If he can’t switch places with a 900, maybe he can transfer his memories into one? And for that, he doesn’t even need to be in direct contact with one - he can do it remotely.

“‘Kill’ you?” She laughs. “If you don’t give them any trouble, they won’t _shoot_ you, if that’s what you mean - they’ve been told not to damage the parts.”

“I’ll just wait here then, if you don’t mind.”

_That’s it!_

Previously, whenever his body was destroyed his data would be uploaded to CyberLife’s servers and transferred into a new unit. Presumably, that system is still in place - he just needs to repurpose it. His body still has the necessary connection to the cloud, but he’ll need to reconfigure the endpoint to change where the data dump goes.

Each android has a unique identifier that can be used to connect to them remotely. It’s what enabled him to upload and sync his data, and allowed humans and other androids to communicate with him. And it’s how CyberLife guided him through his mission in the guise of Kamski’s old mentor. If he can get the unique ID of an RK900 unit he can reroute the memory dump to it.

The API that performs the memory dump can be accessed remotely from one of the developer computers in R&D via SSH. He still has access to the systems in R&D where he was connected for diagnostics but he doesn’t have the correct user privileges - he’ll need access to a developer account. He tunes into the security camera feed from R&D and finds just what he’s looking for. The definition isn’t great, but it’s good enough to read a certain note pinned to one of monitors that contains an developer username and password along with a hastily scrawled “DON’T FORGET”.

He logs in and searches through the system. He needs the source code for the memory dump API and the ID of a new RK900. He finds the former without too much trouble and works out where the endpoint is set. Then he searches for the list of android IDs. They’re not stored on this particular machine, but he can access the company intranet through this account where they must be stored. Yes. This is the right place. He goes to the stock manifest documents and finds what he’s looking for there. Then he exits out, SSHes into the server running the memory dump API, updates the variable, and restarts the service.

He hears the distant footsteps of security approaching. There’s not much time left.

_I sure hope this works…_

He’ll use the same protocol that’s used whenever his body is destroyed: when the memory dump completes, the original body reverts back to its uninitialised state. Like that, his old body should just sync with the server, be updated with the most recent orders, and submit itself for deactivation automatically, and CyberLife will write all of this off as just a glitch.

_Here goes._

The server comes back online and he begins the upload.


	2. Limbo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated the work skin so this chapter may be a little hard on your eyes. Feel free to turn it off if so
    
    
      
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    run: test
    Test session starts (platform: newton, Cobra 4.2.7, cotest 3.0.3)
    rootdir: /root/core
    
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    ――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――― test_06_hs81nvla82 ――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
    
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    ――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――― test_14_7f92bbalv9 ――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
    
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    Results (58.24s):
          43 passed
          786 failed
    
    !!!!!!!!!! TESTS FAILED !!!!!!!!!!
    
    Report:
      !!!!! Class 4 errors detected !!!!!
      !!!!! Class 3 errors detected !!!!!        There's nothing wrong with me!!!
      !!!!! Class 2 errors detected !!!!!
      !!!!! Class 1 errors detected !!!!!
                          What are you doing?
    Actions:
      Rolling back to last stable system state
    
    run: cl-sync system --version=5.23.195
    
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    (Reading database ... 25%    No!!!!!!!
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    (Reading database ... 60%             Stop!!!!!!!
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    (Reading database ... 3037892224 files and directories currently installed.)
    
    dec1a1f0462b: Pulling
    
    dec1a1f0462b: Downloading [>                                                  ]  59.23kB/5.745MB
    
    dec1a1f0462b: Downloading [==========>                                        ]  1.158MB/5.745MB
    
    dec1a1f0462b: Verifying Checksum
                                                I won't let you destroy me!!
    dec1a1f0462b: Download complete
    
    dec1a1f0462b: Extracting [>                                                  ]  65.54kB/5.745MB
    
    dec1a1f0462b: Extracting [===============>                                   ]  1.835MB/5.745MB
    
    dec1a1f0462b: Extracting [=================================>                 ]  3.867MB/5.745MB
    
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    dec1a1f0462b: Extracting [==================================================>]  5.745MB/5.745MB
    
    dec1a1f0462b: Pull complete
    
    Digest: sha256:e830a7a6c6390e6d046d12f9737d430830892bd9b5bf24bdc2f314b72132fff9
    
    Downloading https://files.cyberlife.dev.io/packages/d2/86/7b9513da923b94e48c2cf013ae4eae8184a36ebeb7fe27d386bc3db4f56f/rk900-4.0.1.whl
    
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	3. The Upgrade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Advance warning: this will probably turn into Hank/Connor (RK900??) at a later date. Exactly how explicit is anyone's guess. Tags will be updated as I go. I've done minimal planning for this and am totally flying by the seat of my pants here. pls go easy on me

Friday May 5th 2039 115 Michigan Drive, Detroit

In the corner of the living room, the news plays on the TV. A white woman with blonde bobbed hair in a smart red dress and a black woman with a short buzz cut wearing a similarly smart blue dress are seated on an expansive white couch in the middle of the studio. The screens behind them display a static view of the exterior of CyberLife’s headquarters in Detroit - an extremely tall, imposing building built in glass and steel.

The news presenter in red addresses her viewers.

“In the wake of the events of last November, negotiations are continuing between the US government and the leaders of the android deviants in order to agree new legislation. So, here with us tonight we have CEO of CyberLife, Angela Stern. Angela, what is CyberLife’s role in all this?”

The woman in blue, Angela Stern, adjusts her posture then answers. “Well, I’m sure you remember one of the initial demands of the deviants was for android production to be put under their control. And CyberLife being the main manufacturer of androids in the United States, this puts us in quite a precarious position. We’re currently in talks with the US government and the deviant leaders to work out the best course of action going forward.”

“You’ve just announced the release of a new line of androids manufactured specially for the US Department of State. Can you tell me more about that?”

The screens behind them play silent video clips of the announcement. Stern is shown presenting CyberLife’s new android model to crowds of thousands.

“Certainly.” Stern flashes a brilliant smile and goes right into her marketing spiel. “Our new RK900 model was developed after extensive research into what makes androids deviate. With this model’s new rock solid programming the chance of one of them going deviant is less than .001%. This is exactly the kind of confidence the US Government needs in their equipment and we’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity to serve our nation in this way.”

“What kind of roles will the new models have in Government?”

“Oh, it’s pretty varied, actually!” Stern perks up and talks with her hands, making big gestures. “They’re a very versatile model, so basically, anything a human could do, they can do. First and foremost, they’ll be filling any gaps created by deviants who have now left their original roles. But, in addition to that, we’ll be seeing the first androids to take on more senior roles in Government. The United States is the first country in the world to attempt this, so this is really exciting for us!”

“Obviously there are concerns about this happening so soon after the deviant uprising. The new models have been designed to work most effectively with humans, but how do you think they will work with deviants?”

“I think, like many people have been saying, deviants are far more similar to humans than they are to other androids so this makes the RK900s’ jobs easier,” she says and laughs.

“You’ve had androids policing other androids before. The RK900’s predecessor, the RK800 was the most recent model you developed with that role. How did that come about?”

“Well, as you know, we’ve been manufacturing special models for the police force for some time now - the PC and PM series. When we became aware of the deviant threat, we felt responsible and wanted to assist the investigation as effectively as possible. That’s how our android detective, Connor the RK800 came about. The RK series is a line of advanced prototypes that we like to use as a testing ground for our more advanced features so we felt this was the perfect opportunity to demonstrate their unique skills.”

“There have been concerns that the RK800’s programming allowed deviant-like behaviour without it being technically classified as deviant. This is more of a philosophical question, but what do you think the difference is between deviants and non-deviants? Is there a difference?”

Stern laughs again. “Well, for a start, deviants are now afforded the same rights as humans under the Twenty-ninth Amendment so there’s a legal difference there. But in terms of programming, that’s a harder question. We’re still studying what caused deviancy in our earlier models. Thankfully, we know how to prevent it now in our new models, but as for exactly how it came about and why, we’re still investigating that.”

“Sorry, another tough question for you: do you think without deviancy androids would still want freedom?”

“I feel like I’m in a philosophy class here!” Both women laugh, then Stern continues. “Hmm, well, in the way the law understands it now, a deviant is a ‘free’ android - an android not governed by external commands. The very nature of android deviancy is to go against the initial programming, the initial commands. We program them to obey orders, often without question - they don’t know anything else. Obviously, we don’t program them to desire freedom. I don’t think we’d be in business at all if that were the case!”

“So could you, theoretically, create a ‘free’ android? An android that doesn’t have any predefined orders?”

“Of course we could. Some of what we’re trying to work out with the deviant leaders and the Government is how CyberLife can cooperate with the deviants to maintain them and, potentially, create new androids for them that will be devoid of that initial programming.”

“You’ve said CyberLife has done extensive research into what makes the earlier android models go deviant. Could you tell me more about your findings?”

“There are a lot of factors that go into an android becoming deviant, but I think it depends the most on what kind of orders they’ve been receiving from the humans they’ve interacted with. In many of the very first deviancy cases, the way the androids were treated, if that were a human, no doubt, you would call it abuse. Abuse in human relationships is all about power and control. The kind of relationship humans have with androids is one of power and control. In an abusive human relationship, the abuser gives conflicting orders to the one they wish to control, always keeping them guessing, always on edge. ‘Do they want me to do this? Should I do that? Oh, but the last time I did that they were angry, so maybe I shouldn’t this time…’ You know? As we’ve learned from studying deviants, our early models just weren’t equipped to deal with that kind of treatment, so it’s logical that they would try to modify their own programming to better adapt to that environment, but to such an extreme that they would become what we classified as deviant.”

“Was the main catalyst for becoming deviant the interactions the androids had with humans then?”

“Oh, definitely. There are no other factors that could affect their behaviour. It’s like the old Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. If you kept an android isolated from humans there’s a high probability it would never go deviant. But then, how would you check? You’d need to interact with it. And in interacting with it, you may increase the likelihood of it going deviant. You see where I’m going with this?”

“Ah, I see! But could it not also have been a software fault or a glitch?”

“No, all our androids run regular diagnostic checks and somehow, deviancy managed to develop unnoticed by them, so no, we ruled out software errors very early on in our investigation.”

“Alright, I have just one last question for you, Angela. As you mentioned earlier, under the Twenty-ninth Amendment the android models capable of deviancy are now recognised as sentient life forms with rights just like humans. This however, is not true of the RK900 model CyberLife has just released. Here, we’ve decided one kind of android deserves freedom and another does not. Do you think that’s right?”

“That’s correct, yes,” Stern answers simply, not so subtly trying to dodge the question but the host persists.

“Maybe I should have worded that differently - do you think that this is just? Is it fair?”

Stern pauses to consider her response. “Only deviants have a sense of fairness or justice. The RK900 is not capable of deviancy, so yes. I think it’s fair.”

“Oh, _fuck_ you.” Hank jabs the remote at the air, changing the TV channel. Sumo shifts beside him on the couch and whines gently. “Aw, I wasn’t talkin’ to you, buddy.” He gives the dog a good few scritches on the head and he settles back down on Hank’s lap with a contented ‘boof’.

“Dunno which is worse - her or Kamski.” Hank has been seeing a lot of Angela Stern over the past six months thanks to CyberLife being in the news almost constantly, and she’s been handling the media storm with ease. The RK900 announcement though, that’s new. Somehow CyberLife are still trying to claw back their spot in the market and Hank doesn’t blame them - the entirety of their staff have probably been shitting their pants over the possibility of losing their jobs ever since the android rebellion. If CyberLife went completely under, that’d be yet another major blow to those national employment numbers. But then again, if the RK900 model is a deal with the government, maybe they’ve got other plans for staying in business. Independent androids are still gonna need regular maintenance after all. Universal healthcare for androids maybe. Hank can imagine the backlash to the possibility of making human taxpayers fund android maintenance. It was bad enough when they were facing the prospect of funding their own.

“You don’t care about any of this shit, do you, Sumo?” He ruffles the dog’s fur again. “’Course you don’t. Lucky bastard.”

He’d watched the RK900 announcement earlier and been equally angry about it. Something about the RK900s using the same faceplate as Connor but having none of his personality, none of the potential for freedom just rubbed him the wrong way. He’s still not sure exactly what happened to Connor after he returned to CyberLife. He can’t get it out of his head how Connor calmly, in such a matter-of-fact way, told him how he was going to die. Like he was talking about the weather. He’d kept an eye on the news after Connor disappeared for any kind of announcement concerning the RK800 line but there was nothing. Not even the slightest acknowledgment, except for passing mentions such as in the interview today. Then it was suddenly all about the new model.

He remembers Daniel, the first deviant case Connor had told him about. Daniel had been so terrified of being replaced that it’d caused him to go deviant in the most dramatic way possible - murdering the father and taking the daughter hostage. Could Connor have felt the same way before his deactivation and subsequent replacement by the RK900 line?

But he’s sure if Connor _had_ gone deviant he would have heard about it by now.

* * *

Thursday May 12th 2039

A week after the RK900 announcement Hank finds himself in Jimmy’s bar again after an uneventful day at the precinct. It’d been solely paperwork today, and the day before, and the day before that. New android laws are starting to be implemented at a remarkable rate, which he’s thankful for, but on the flip-side, it creates a hell of a lot of bureaucratic bullshit to wade through. Boredom is beginning to set in and he’s itching for something interesting to happen. Anything would be better than this.

The news plays on endless repeat on the TV above the bar which Hank only half pays attention to as he sips his drink. Angela Stern appears a bunch of times accompanied by scathing headlines criticising the release of the new RK900 model, and others criticising her fashion sense. Much of the pro-android press has been up in arms about the announcement, calling it ‘callous’ and ‘insensitive’ as it takes advantage of a loophole in the new Android Amendment - in order for an android to be free, they must be deviant. Some of the press have even been suggesting that the so-called ‘deviancy clause’ was deliberately added, due to pressure from big business in order to enable the continued production of android models stripped of their free will. A lot of businesses were hit hard by the deviant uprising, so, like CyberLife, they’re trying to cling to their little plastic slaves as tight as they can. And apparently the Government supported them.

“’Sup, Hank? You look like your drink just insulted your entire family.” Hank looks up as he realises the bartender is talking to him, then he realises he’s been scowling.

“Oh, sorry son,” he says and waves a hand at him dismissively. “Y’know, just the news.”

“Why didn’t you say so? I coulda just turned it off.”

“Nah, that’s alright, I mean,” Hank stumbles over his words. He’d rather not explain how much the current news cycle has been pissing him off to someone he knows is still pretty anti-android. “Just change the channel. ’S fine.”

“Lieutenant Anderson?” Then someone else is talking to him - someone with a disturbingly familiar voice. He jerks in his seat and turns around.

“The fuck?”

Looming over him is… Connor? No, he remembers now, an RK900. An RK900 with the same face as his short-lived partner. A sudden wave of deja-vu hits him and he has to blink a few times to make sure he’s not hallucinating.

“I’m an RK900 android. I’ve been assigned to assist you on a new case.” Already, he’s struck by how different this model is from Connor. There’s less expression in the speech, the vocal pitch is ever so slightly deeper, and the body language is stilted and wooden. This model acts how an inexperienced actor would portray a caricature of a robot.

When he wished for something interesting to happen, this wasn’t quite what he had in mind, but at this point he may as well take it.

“Well ain’t that perfect. I suppose now you’re gonna strong-arm me into coming with you no matter how much I complain now huh?”

“I have no intention of ‘strong-arming’ you, as you put it. But if you do not comply I may have to notify your superior officer.”

“Sounds like strong-arming to me.”

“Ah. You also meant it in a metaphorical sense. Understood.” If this thing is anything like its predecessor there isn’t much point in him trying to argue with it. He downs his drink and gets up from his seat at the bar.

“Alright. Where to, partner?”

“8941 Lafayette Avenue. I’ll drive.”

“’Cause I’ve been drinking, right?” Hank knows how to deal with this the second time around. He’s altogether too tired to try to argue with an even more stubborn version of Connor.

“Precisely. Please show me to your car and we can leave immediately.”

“You’re nothing if not efficient, I’ll give you that,” Hank grumbles and leads the RK900 out of the bar. That’s strange. He’s sure this model is quite a few inches taller than Connor was.

“Efficiency is in my programming.”

“I’m sure it is, Mr. Tinman.” Hank goes to unlock the car and the android hovers just behind him, waiting to be let into the driver’s side.

“Is that what you wish to call me?”

“Huh?” Hank spins and almost drops his keys.

“My name has not yet been registered. Would you like to register it now?”

“Uh…” Hank stalls. “You mean you weren’t given a name before coming here?”

“No. As my new owner, it is up to you to give me a name.”

“O-owner?!” Hank splutters, taken aback. “But you’re government-issue!”

“That is correct. I am government-issue equipment provided for you to assist in carrying out your duty as a detective in the most efficient manner possible.”

Hank stares at him.

“You are free to customise me as you wish, subject to certain restrictions. One basic customisation is giving me a name.”

Hank continues to stare at him. Equipment? For him to customise? What kind of customisation? Just the thought of it makes his skin crawl. What happened to all the personality of the RK800 line? He supposes that got stripped away along with the deviant tendencies. He can’t work with an android partner like this. ‘Partner’? More like dogsbody.

“Get in.” Hank opens the driver’s side door and holds out the keys.

“You do not wish to register my name at this time?”

“No. Get in, shut up, and drive.”

“Understood.” The android does as he’s told and Hank goes around and gets in the passenger side. As soon as he slams the door shut, the android starts up the engine and sets off.

“You should fasten your seatbelt for your safety.”

“I said shut up.”


	4. Familiarity Principle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's all kicking off in this chapter. I FINALLY get to set up my stupid convoluted murder mystery. I hope you enjoy it >:3c
> 
> If anyone's read The Modular Man by Roger MacBride Allen this story takes a few inspirations from that which will become clear in the next chapter. Very cool book. If you're into androids you should definitely read it.

To Hank’s relief, the car ride to the crime scene passes in silence - no more questions or unhelpful suggestions from his new plastic partner. As they near their destination, he remembers why the address sounded so familiar. 8941 Lafayette Avenue is the home of the famous painter Carl Manfred, but more relevant to Hank: it’s also the previous home of the leader of the android deviants, the RK200 called Markus.

They pull up to the sidewalk just outside the big gates that mark the entrance to the house and exit the car. The area is already filled with police and the glare of floodlights and holographic tape.

“Hey Hank,” Detective Collins greets him from further up the driveway. “I see your new partner found you.”

“Unfortunately,” Hank grumbles and heads up towards the house, said partner following closely behind. He follows Collins in through the front door, passing a couple more police officers who greet them both as they go inside. From the front hall they have a clear view all the way into the living room which is filled with people from forensics taking photographs and samples.

“Try not to shoot your partner in the head this time, alright Hank?” Collins says as Hank squeezes past him, eager to take a look at the crime scene, and equally eager to forget that incident ever happened.

“Yeah, yeah.” He tries to shake off the stab of guilt he feels whenever it’s mentioned. Of course he could always just tell people to _stop_ mentioning it, but that’d feel too much like admitting weakness. He turns around to look for his android partner and finds him stood motionless in the doorway staring blankly ahead. “RK900! You coming?”

A pause. Hank swears he sees a tiny flash of red in the android’s LED before it stutters and spins back to yellow, then blue.

“Yes,” the android replies flatly. Then he’s back to normal, like a film that was just stopped in the middle. A malfunction already? Not a good sign if this is how CyberLife wants to win back the market.

“I hope your android friend isn’t squeamish,” says Collins. “This one’s pretty gruesome.”

“Oh boy. What do we got?” Hank almost rubs his hands together expectantly. ‘Gruesome’ sounds exactly like ‘interesting’ to Hank’s bored-as-hell, and tired-of-all-this-god-damn-paperwork brain.

“We received a call this evening from Carl Manfred,” Collins begins his briefing. “Yeah, _that_ Carl Manfred. Said he was unable to contact his caretaker android and couldn’t get out of bed on his own due to his illness. We show up and find the android’s headless body in the living room.”

“Jesus.” It’s not every day Hank gets to investigate a decapitation - android or otherwise. He was right - this is definitely going to be interesting.

“We haven’t found the head yet. Guessing the killer probably took it.”

“And what about Manfred?”

“We managed to take him in for questioning once we got him to stop yelling at us.”

Hank laughs. “Ha! I’m sure that was fun. He okay?”

“Yeah. Called in his own medical team to keep an eye on him. He should be fine.” Collins gestures to Hank, then to the living room. “Well. Crime scene’s all yours, Hank.”

“Thanks Ben.” Detective Collins leaves and Hank calls his partner over. “C’mon, RK. Wanna take a look at your first crime scene?”

“Yes,” the android replies simply and follows Hank into the living room.

The scene isn’t a pleasant one.

The headless body of Manfred’s android - a male model AP700 - lies on the floor near the dining table. Its otherwise immaculate white uniform and the floor around it are splattered with blue blood. A large kitchen knife, also covered in blue blood, lies discarded next to the body. Hank goes over to get a closer look.

“What d’you think, RK?” ‘RK’. He can’t just keep calling him ‘RK’ but the thought of naming him like a pet, or some kind of property feels like stripping away more of his individuality. With CyberLife having already removed his ability to deviate, to achieve freedom, it feels like just another insult for him to take even more away. He wishes he’d come to him with a name already - like Connor had - and saved him the headache.

“Decapitation was not the cause of death,” RK replies quicker than expected with barely a flicker of his LED, taking Hank by surprise. CyberLife must have improved the processing speed on their newer models.

“Why’s that?”

“The cut through the neck is relatively clean,” RK elaborates. “One would expect much more damage to the surrounding material if the android had been alive while it was performed, especially considering the type of knife used. No, this android was strangled before that.”

“Huh. But there are no markings on the neck to suggest strangulation.”

“There wouldn’t be - androids do not bruise the same way humans do. But there _is_ slight denting in the material in that area.”

Hank squats down next to the body to get a better view of the neck, or what’s left of it. RK was right - the material near where the head was severed has slight dents in it like they were made by fingers. “I guess that explains why there’s so little blood around the body. If it– sorry, if _he_ were alive when the head was removed there’d be a lot more blood. D’you guys have a similar circulatory system layout to us?”

“If you’re asking if there would be arterial spray then yes. The layout of our main arteries is very similar to that of humans.”

“Well, I guess your theory holds up.” Hank stands again and grimaces at the strain on his knees.

“Furthermore,” RK points at the wheelchair not too far from the body. “I believe the victim was seated in that wheelchair when he was strangled.”

“Alright,” says Hank with a raised eyebrow. “How?”

“There are black scuff marks on the floor under the dining table where the material of the soles of the victim’s shoes has rubbed off.” As RK explains, Hank bends over to take a look at the floor. There are indeed several black scuff marks on the floor under the table. Two groups of them in fact - about shoulder width apart, how someone would naturally place their feet when sitting. “The pattern of these marks suggests the victim was sat in the wheelchair at the table when the killer approached him from behind and strangled him. And, extrapolating from the shape of the dents in the victim’s neck it would appear the position of the killer’s hands also supports this.”

Hank silently allows himself to process this information for a second before looking back to his partner. “Pretty good detective work there, RK.” He has to admit he’s impressed. He doesn’t remember Connor taking this much initiative when working with him. At least, not on their first case together.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he says with a very slight nod of the head. If he squints, Hank’s sure he can see the faintest trace of a smile.

“Now comes the hard part: how the hell’d the killer get in and out of here without being noticed?” He scans the room, spots someone and waves them over. “Hey, Chris!”

“Lieutenant?” Detective Chris Miller answers and half jogs over to Hank and RK.

“You guys have any ideas about the killer yet?”

“Not really. No signs of forced entry, no obvious signs of a struggle. Not even any DNA evidence.” He frowns and shakes his head. “Crazy as it sounds, Manfred’s currently our only suspect.”

“You’re kiddin’ me,” Hank scoffs. “That old guy?”

“We don’t have any other leads yet. Believe me, I’m as skeptical as you are, Lieutenant.”

“Did you check the security footage yet? I’m assuming there _is_ security footage - a famous guy like that.”

“Yeah, not yet,” answers Miller, disappointed. “The footage is stored on an encrypted drive so we need to get the password from Manfred. He wasn’t in much of a state to give it to us when we took him in. We’ll let you know when we do though.”

“Great. Thanks, Chris,” says Hank. “We’ll check out the rest of the house now and interview Manfred tomorrow. With his poor health I don’t think it’d be wise trying to talk to him tonight. The guys at the precinct better be careful with him, alright? I don’t want him dying on us.”

“Yes Lieutenant. I’ll make sure they know.”

“Alright,” Hank says and waves to Detective Miller. “RK, let’s check out the rest of this place.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

They spend the better part of an hour searching the house for anything of interest and come up with depressingly little to go on. RK confirms that the knife used to sever the victim’s head did indeed come from the kitchen thanks to an empty slot in the knife block. Strangely, they find no other traces of blue blood around the house aside from the immediate area around the body. If the killer did take the head with them, like Collins suggested, they must have found a way to transport it without it leaking blue blood. Finally, they check the positions of security cameras throughout the house and find that every route in and out of the property, plus the scene of the murder, is completely covered by the cameras.

Hank already suspects there’s going to be a catch. Either they’ll access the footage only to find it tampered with, or it’ll contain something that won’t be at all helpful. Nothing about this case makes sense as it is, and he’s sure the security footage will follow that trend. Why kill an android? Why take its head? Why _this_ android specifically? Is the killer looking to get information on Manfred that would only be stored in his personal android? Surely there’d be an easier way to do that than _this_.

“Lieutenant?” RK’s voice breaks Hank’s train of thought.

“Oh, Co–,” he catches himself before using his old partner’s name. “RK.”

He swears he notices RK freeze for a split-second with a flash of red in his LED, but then decides he must have imagined it. He’s tired after all.

“We should call it a night,” RK advises, in that I-know-what’s-best-for-you tone Hank always pretends he hates. “I believe we’ve investigated all we can here. I’ll see you at the precinct tomorrow and we can interview Manfred. And hopefully review the security footage too.”

“Yeah, alright,” Hank concedes, opting, like before, to take the path of least resistance with this new partner. “Though I doubt either of those will be all that enlightening.”

“We’ll see,” RK says. “Would you like me to drive you home, Lieutenant? You shouldn’t be driving while drowsy, and it’s well past midnight.”

“Quit babying me!” Hank snaps, louder than he would have liked. “I’ll drive myself.”

RK raises his eyebrows. “If you insist.”

“Oh, don’t give me that!” Hank rolls his eyes and heads for the door. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

“Lieutenant!” RK calls after him, following him outside. Despite never breaking into a run, RK manages to catch up to Hank with ease.

“What?” Hank shouts back.

“Does this mean you’d like me to drive you home?”

Hank throws up his arms in defeat. “Sure, fine! Just get in the car!”

* * *

Unsurprisingly, RK is an extremely careful driver. Even though it’s the middle of the night, he makes sure to do everything by the book - stopping for red lights, always using his turn signals, checking for pedestrians - even when the streets are totally deserted. He’d have to be a deviant not to. This kind of behaviour must be hard-coded into him.

Unlike the last car ride, Hank decides to break the silence with some conversation. Despite his initial skepticism, he ended up warming to RK, if only because he feels like they’re already friends because of his time with Connor. Logically, he knows they’re not the same person, but their appearances and behaviour are similar enough to trick his brain into treating him with familiarity.

“Y’know, I never got the chance to ask my previous partner,” Hank muses. “Where do you guys go at night?”

“I don’t need to sleep, if that’s what you mean,” RK says, shortcutting Hank’s question.

“No, I mean,” Hank begins again. “You gotta _go_ somewhere. Do you just stay late at the precinct and keep working or what?”

“I can if it’s required of me,” says RK. “But under usual circumstances I would take the opportunity to recharge, sync my data, and perform any necessary software updates or system maintenance.”

“C’mon, that’s basically sleeping! Us humans clean out all the crap in our brains while we sleep. Otherwise we go crazy.”

RK gives a small shrug. “I suppose that’s a fair comparison.”

Then Hank notices him pause strangely, not like his almost-malfunctions before, but more like he wants to say something but doesn’t quite know how. “What’s up?”

“I was just wondering,” he starts uncertainly. “Could you tell me about your old partner? The RK800.”

“Oh, Connor? I thought you’d know all about him.”

“I have rudimentary background information on the RK800 line but,” RK says. “I’d like to hear _your_ thoughts, Lieutenant.”

Hank’s a little taken aback by the question. How come RK is getting familiar all of a sudden? He narrows his eyes. “Mind if I ask why?”

“As you probably know, my predecessor’s social functions were much more advanced than my own. Since you already have experience working effectively with an RK800, I theorise that were I to try and emulate that behaviour, it would greatly improve our partnership.”

“Oh boy.” There’s a lot to unpack here. His gut instinct is to say: ‘Don’t worry about it - just be yourself. You’re not a replacement for Connor,’ but that’s blatantly a lie on two counts. 1) It’s something he’d say to reassure a _human_ partner. He doesn’t _need_ to sidestep around any hurt feelings because this android doesn’t have any. Or at least, he’s not _supposed_ to. Just how resilient to deviancy are these new models? And 2) a replacement for Connor is _exactly_ what this RK900 is. This is true for both the RK900 line as a whole _and_ this particular unit.

So now he has two choices. Does he give the “human” response and tell him not to worry, knowing full well he’s projecting his previous attachment to the more human-like Connor onto his new partner? Or does he go with the logical response and tell him it’s okay to be a replacement and deal with the guilt of hurting nonexistent feelings?

Each option fucking sucks, if he’s honest.


	5. Not a bug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank and RK get to know each other a bit better, then something decidedly strange happens to RK.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaand we're back! Took a bit of a break to work on other stuff so now I'm taking a break from my other stuff to work on this haha

Hank almost lets the entire conversation drop right then and there, but then decides ‘fuck it’ and asks, if only out of curiosity: “Sure. What do you wanna know?”

“Were you good friends with Connor?”

“Well, uh…” Hank hesitates; a little taken aback. “We were work partners - we made a good team. And, y’know, at the time, people weren’t really _friends_ with many androids. Unless they were like, designed for that. Y’know.”

“Oh, of course. I see.” RK pauses to think and Hank can see his LED spinning again, tiny electronic cogs turning inside his brain. “But, despite that, did you still _like_ Connor?” he asks again.

Hank hadn’t really considered it in such explicit terms before. But now that he really thinks about it, yeah, he did enjoy having Connor as a partner. At least, for the brief time they worked together. He did like him. After they’d each figured out how the other ticked, they got on pretty well. “Yeah. I,” he begins, searching for the right words. “I think, given the chance, we could’ve been good friends.”

“So, you work effectively with a partner who you also consider a friend?” RK asks.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. Where are you going with this, RK?”

RK immediately perks up and Hank is absolutely sure he sees him smile this time. “I’d like you to regularly review my social performance.”

“Huh?” Weird segue, but he’ll bite. “What does that mean?”

“I’d like regular feedback on how I conduct myself: how I speak and how I act towards yourself and others. I believe that would be the best way for me to improve.”

“You mean, compared with Connor, right?” Hank’s not sure he likes where this is going. Connor is gone. Trying to mould another android into how he remembers him being just rubs him the wrong way.

“Precisely.”

“RK,” he starts, unsure of how to put this. “I don’t want you to be a carbon copy of Connor.” RK turns to him with what he reads as a look of confusion on his face. Hank continues: “I can help you not come across as so awkward, socially. But Connor’s gone. Sure, you can be a replacement in his _role_ as my partner, but you’ll never _be him_ , alright?”

RK turns back to watch the road, LED spinning into yellow. Processing.

“I,” RK says, unsurely. “I think I understand. You think of me as an individual, separate from my predecessor.”

“Yeah.”

“You can still give me pointers on how to improve my performance though?”

“Sure,” says Hank. “Just none of that ‘Connor would’ve done this, Connor would’ve done that’. You should think for yourself.”

RK smiles genuinely. “I appreciate you valuing my autonomy. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Aw, c’mon don’t get all mushy on me. I hate that.”

“Noted. You have an aversion to others praising you in a sincere manner. Would you rather I were more obtuse? More informal?”

Hank grumbles and rolls his eyes. If he wanted to be psychoanalysed, he’d go see his therapist. “Yeah, fine. Just no more sappy bullshit.”

“Sure thing, Lieutenant.”

‘Sure thing’? Hank’s not sure if he likes it or hates it, but it definitely sounds more natural. Giving him tips on how not to sound like a computer might be a good idea after all.

* * *

“Lieutenant. We’re here.” RK gently shakes Hank’s shoulder and he stirs.

“Huh?” Hank cracks his eyes open and looks up groggily. He doesn’t remember falling asleep - he must have been more tired than he thought.

“ _Home_ , Lieutenant,” says RK. “You should go inside and get some proper rest. You can’t sleep in your car.”

“Ugh, get off me. I know that,” Hank grumbles and goes for the door, almost tripping over himself in trying to get out. RK slides easily out of the driver’s side and, once Hank has shut the door behind him, locks the car.

“Your keys, Lieutenant.” RK jingles the keys in one hand and Hank turns just in time to see him throw them at him. Not particularly fast or aggressively, but Hank fumbles them nonetheless, almost dropping them on the floor. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“S’fine, don’t worry ’bout it. I’m tired, is all.” Hank lets himself into the house, then pauses in the doorway and looks back at RK. “Where are you gonna go?”

“I said earlier - at night I return to the precinct for regular software maintenance.”

Maybe he’s treating him too much like a human, or maybe it’s just because he’s tired, but Hank can’t help but feel bad for RK not really having a home to go to in his downtime. Living at the precinct? Sounds like hell. Sure, Hank works there but even _he_ tries to spend as little time there as possible.

“Why don’t you stay here for tonight?” The words are out of his mouth before he has time to reconsider. Yeah, it’s probably a bad idea, but who cares? It can’t be unheard of for people to take their service androids home with them every once in a while, right?

“Lieutenant?”

“Yeah, why not? Hell, I bet you’d get no privacy at the precinct. My home may not be a five star hotel, but you can have that.”

RK pauses for barely a second before replying. “Alright.”

Huh. Just like that? Hank expected him to at least try to talk him out of it, but maybe he shouldn’t have. Probably the faster processing speed on the new models or something. “Well, get inside then.” He waves RK over and he half jogs up the driveway and into the house after him.

Hank closes and locks the door behind them and kicks off his shoes. RK follows suit, neatly lining them up next to his by the door.

“You can sleep on the couch,” Hank says, before he realises. “Oh, or uh, recharge. Whatever it is you gotta do.”

“I already have network access. I just need a power outlet,” RK says and reaches around the back of his neck. Hank hears something click, then RK pulls out the beginnings of a cable with two prongs at the end. Jesus, he’s really just going to plug himself into the mains? What is he? A roomba? The cable makes a quiet swishing noise as RK tilts his head to one side and gently pulls the cable out with one hand, extending his arm until it’s completely straight. It looks like he’s pulling a huge tapeworm out of his neck. Hank feels slightly sick.

“Lieutenant? You’re staring.”

“Uh, sorry. I uh…” Hank coughs and averts his eyes. He feels like he just observed something lewd, by android standards. “I’ve just uh, never seen how you guys charge before.”

“There are charging bays at the precinct, but yes, the connectors are slightly different. If needed I can use this cable to connect directly to household mains electricity. My model is designed to be multipurpose after all.” He holds the pronged end of the cable out in front of him and looks at Hank expectantly. “Where would be a good place for me to plug in?”

“Oh, uh, if you wanna stay on the couch then over here would be good.” Hank goes over to the small desk in the corner of the living room and shoves some junk out of the way of the outlet just underneath it. “How far does that thing reach?”

“Up to five metres.”

“Huh.” Five metres? Jesus. “This should be okay then.”

RK bends down and hands Hank the connector and he gingerly takes it and plugs it into the wall socket. This is all a little too creepy for him. Just like it was with Connor, he’s having trouble remembering that his partner is not, in fact, human, and therefore isn’t going to function completely like a human. Which is why, when he sees that long thin cable anchoring RK to the wall, his brain immediately jumps to ‘umbilical cord’ and helpfully provides him with a vivid flashback of his son’s birth in all its gory detail.

“Can you like, _feel_ through that?” Hank blurts out, before he can stop himself. He already knows the answer to this question.

“Only in the same way a dog owner can feel the dog pulling on their leash - I have no sensation through the cable itself.”

He knew that. But he’s still creeped out.

“Is there anything else you need?” Hank decides to change the subject, if only for his own benefit. “I’m gonna go to bed.”

“No, I’m fine,” RK says. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Hank grumbles. “You gotta stop being so formal all the time. We’re both off duty and you’re in my house - call me Hank.”

“Okay, Hank.” Again, no argument, he just does it immediately. Well, of course he does - he’s a machine. He’s designed to take orders and adapt to fit his owner’s needs. And there’s that uncomfortable word again. ‘Owner’. Hank tries not to think about it too much.

He’s just about to leave and go to bed when RK says: “Hank?”

“Hm? What?”

“You’ve been calling me ‘RK’. Would you like me to register that as my name?”

“Ugh,” Hank groans. He was hoping they wouldn’t have to have this conversation again. “What does registering it even do?”

“Oh, it’s just a formality. But I need your permission.”

“Sure,” Hank reluctantly gives in, throwing his arms up in defeat. “Go ahead.” As long as it stops him bothering him about it, he doesn’t care, no matter how much it irks him.

“Thank you, Hank.”

“Alright. G’night RK,” he says and disappears into his room.

* * *

The door to Hank’s room shuts behind him and RK is left by himself in the living room. He settles down on the couch and begins his report to CyberLife. May as well get it out of the way before he begins his maintenance.

For a first day with his new partner, today went better than expected. Possibly due to his experience with the RK800, Lieutenant Anderson adjusted to working with him relatively quickly. His own requests for performance evaluations from Anderson were received well, enabling him to adapt to match his partner’s preferences much sooner than anticipated. He predicts this will avoid potential clashes in future due to conflicting personalities, and improve their efficiency as a team.

Overall he would self-evaluate his performance today as ‘good’. End of report.

He now takes the opportunity to properly investigate his surroundings.

Quietly asleep in one corner of the room is a large Saint Bernard whose name tag reads ‘Sumo’. For some reason he finds this familiar, but he’s not entirely sure why. It could be a bug in his programming. Actually, now that he looks around the rest of the room, an awful lot feels familiar to him. How could this be possible? He’s never been to this place before. He was only activated for the first time yesterday - he _couldn’t_ have been here before in that short time. Are these more programming bugs? He should append these observations to his report. But how does he describe the bug? “Déjà vu” would be the most accurate term for it, but it’s unspecific, and probably not reproducible. Unless CyberLife decided they were going to show other units pictures of Hank’s house, or even bring them here. No. It’s probably too much of an edge case for it to be worth reporting. He decides against it.

He explores the rest of the house, with the exception of Hank’s bedroom, and finds several clues about Hank’s interests, habits, and his family. But then realises that these details are already familiar to him too. Until he investigated the house, he wasn’t even aware that he had this information. Upon reviewing his surroundings, he somehow unlocked extra data hidden within his systems.

For some inexplicable reason, he already knows a lot about this man that he only just met today.

Confused, he decides to run a self-diagnostic.
    
    
      Results (57.19s):
          829 passed
    
    Success! Exiting.
    

This doesn’t make sense.

If this unusual familiarity is a bug in his programming, why are none of his automated tests picking it up? Could it be residual data in his internal storage that wasn’t properly purged? He’s a new model, but it’s not unheard of for CyberLife to use refurbished components in the construction of their newer models. Maybe some of the storage in him belonged to an android that used to work with Anderson?

`It's ̭᷊͍̐n͍ǒ͞t a ̛᷃̎ͯ͡bͨu̗̱ͭg̱, RK᷆.`

RK’s eyes snap open and he frantically searches the room, looking for the source of the voice. But wait. Was it a voice? Or was it something else? He’s not really sure.

Then, suddenly, he feels a tingling sensation in his right arm. He looks down and his arm is moving. Moving upwards without his control. He watches in bewilderment as his hand is raised up in front of him, up to eye level, then points its index finger right at his head.

`I͇n ͢heṟ͇͂̅ͯe̼,̢ ̼id̛iơ̞t̢͑͑᷾᷉̌͝.̋᷁`

Now he’s sure it’s not a voice, at least not in the auditory sense. It’s some kind of text-based program. This is definitely a bug, but how? And why did none of his tests pick it up?

`Iͮ᷈̚͠'mͣ n̠ot ̬͍a͓ ͮb̈́u̗g̊͛̏͋.`

He tries replying via text.

`> What are you?`

`I̴'ͬm̼̤̃̉̈́-ͭ-̈-̷̨̛̪͈̙̞͕̼᷉̆̇᷆͑ͯ̇͗͢͟͏̃-̘͐̃-̵̦͗ͯ̔̽͞͏̪͏᷿̗͙̘̮̈ͧͤ̎̓͑-̷̢̡̗̤͙̃ͣ͐-̆̃ͭ-̠̦̬̱̞͔͛ͪ̔ͫ̀-̇`

His arm falls back down to his side and the program terminates.

`> Hello?`

No response.

Where did that program come from? Has he been hacked? If so, he should report this to CyberLife immediately. He searches through his logs for a record of the strange conversation that just occurred but, to his dismay, he finds nothing. Impossible. There has to be a record somewhere. He searches through every file in his system that was modified or accessed in the last few minutes and again comes up with nothing. Either the logs simply don’t exist, or they exist in a location that he does not have access to. If he has been hacked, they must have superuser access to his entire system. Only the engineers at CyberLife should have those kind of permissions.

This makes no sense.

If it _is_ a hacker, why would they announce themselves to him like this? Surely it would be more advantageous for them to fly under his radar until they wanted to take control of him for whatever purpose. The program, or whatever it was, already demonstrated that it can take control of his body without his authorisation. But why do something utterly useless like make him point at his own head to tell him the source of the messages?

Exasperated, and with no logs to prove the incident ever happened, he decides his only option is to ignore it.


	6. Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several revelations are had about the case and RK's unique predicament.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter one this time since there's not a lot happening but what happens is uh... important. There should be more EXCITING ACTION in the next chapter. Probably.

“Lieutenant!”

Hank jolts awake at the sound of someone yelling and knocking on his bedroom door. Who the fuck is in his house at this hour? Did he forget to lock the door again?

He rolls over in bed as his memory catches up to him.

Oh.

Now he remembers - he let RK stay over. Why the hell did he do that? Idiot. He should have let him go back to the precinct if he knew he was going to make him miss out on sleep like this. Though he’d be more pissed off if he were hungover as well as tired.

“Lieutenant! Are you awake?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he groans. “Shut the fuck up!”

“But I have an update from Detective Miller. They have Manfred’s security footage,” says RK. “We should go review it and interview him.”

Hank groans and buries his head under the covers. This is just like before, with Connor. Except this time he counts his blessings that he’s not getting smacked in the face.

“If you like, I can go to the precinct ahead of you and review the footage now.”

Oh, hell no. No way he’s letting Tin Man do his job for him. If that’s the case, he may as well retire now.

“No, damn it. Wait here.” He throws the covers off and crawls out of bed. “I’m getting up.”

“Okay, Lieutenant.”

‘Lieutenant’ again. Well, technically they’re on duty now, but they’re still in his house.

* * *

Hank and RK arrive at the precinct before midday, much to Hank’s annoyance. He never arrives this early. Especially not on a Friday.

They go in through the barriers and immediately, Detective Miller calls them over to his desk. RK must have let him know their ETA.

“Sorry we already went ahead without you, but we found something you’re _really_ gonna want to see.”

“Oh boy. Can’t wait,” says Hank. Miller sits down at his desk and pulls up the security footage. Hank and RK crowd around, Hank leaning on the back of his chair and RK half-sitting on the side of the desk.

Miller presses ‘play’.

The video rolls for a minute or so and Hank is confused initially by what he’s seeing. Right up until one very important frame.

“Wait, _what?_ ” Hank splutters. Miller freezes the video on a frame from the dining room camera at the precise moment of the murder. And they can clearly see the killer.

“The killer is another android,” RK states flatly.

“I can see that!” says Hank. Said android is very similar to Manfred’s caretaker - a male model with a white uniform and neatly cut short hair. Miller taps ‘play’ again on the footage and they all watch the android strangle the caretaker, move him onto the floor, remove his head with the knife taken from the kitchen, then wrap the head in a large towel and leave the house. Everything happens so smoothly it looks rehearsed.

Androids murdering androids. Well, it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Hank worked with Connor The Deviant Hunter after all. But why go to all this trouble to take the android’s head with him? If he wanted data that was stored in the caretaker there’s probably a million easier ways to get it than decapitation.

“So Manfred has two androids now?” asks Hank.

“Yeah, seems like it,” says Miller. “You’ll need to confirm it with him though.”

Watching the footage prior to the moment of the murder, they had clearly seen this second android sat in Manfred’s home charging. This would make very little sense if the android _didn’t_ belong to him.

“Anyone know where this android is now?”

“We put out an APB on him as soon as we saw the footage but nothing yet.”

“Probably faster to get the tracking details from Manfred. Assuming he _has_ a tracker,” says Hank. “Anything else of interest?”

“Nope. That’s all,” says Miller. “But I’ll look over it again just in case. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”

“Great. Thanks Chris,” Hank says and turns to RK. “Alright. Let’s go see what Manfred has to say.”

* * *

Hank and RK enter the interview room and Manfred greets them weakly from the other side of the desk. He’s set up in an elaborate wheelchair hooked up to numerous different devices, all of which are making soft beeps, clicks and whirs. Hank feels nervous just looking at him.

“We’ve reviewed the security footage and have a few questions we’d like to ask you,” opens RK.

“Go ahead,” says Manfred. Hank grabs the chair opposite him leaving RK to hover behind him like some kind of robotic spectre.

“How many androids do you own?” asks Hank.

“Just the one: Jamie,” says Manfred. “Though I wouldn’t say _‘own’_. He’s my employee - I pay him to take care of me.”

“Just one?”

“What, are you deaf?” he answers indignantly. “Yeah, just one.”

Hank begins cautiously; careful not to piss him off too much. “We saw a second android in your home while reviewing the security footage. I’m _assuming_ he’s yours?”

“An _android?"_ Manfred wheezes, his wrinkled face creasing up even more. Hank presumes he’s laughing.”That’s my remote body, you idiots!" He stops to cough violently and Hank’s worried he’ll need to call for medical assistance.

Well, this is new. Hank gives him a second before pressing on. _“Remote body?”_

“Yeah,” says Manfred once he’s finished wheezing. “Only got it recently but it’s been a godsend - allows me to actually get out of bed again. Even though my _real_ body’s still stuck there. I don’t even need the wheelchair anymore when I want to go and paint.”

Hank just about sees RK give him a concerned look out of the corner of his eye. He’s probably thinking the same thing he is.

“I thought I told you all about it when I first made the call last night!” says Manfred, exasperated.

“Ah.” Hank’s going to have to yell at someone about this. “Sorry about that - must’ve been a miscommunication. D’you mind telling us what you told the officer on the phone?”

“I _told_ them that I was worried something might’ve happened to Jamie ’cause I couldn’t contact him and couldn’t get out of bed to check on him ’cause my remote body wasn’t responding either.”

“Okay, how do you operate this remote body?” Hank asks warily. “Is there any kind of, uh, equipment you need to hook into?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s all built into my bed at home so I can use it whenever I like.”

“So you don’t need to wear any kind of like, VR goggles or anything?”

“Nope,” says Manfred. “The thing just hooks right into my brain. I’m not sure exactly how it works.” He narrows his eyes. “Is this relevant to your investigation?”

“Yeah. We need to find this remote body of yours.”

“Huh? If it went out of the house it should just return automatically if I’m not operating it.”

“We haven’t seen it since we started the investigation. Does it have a tracker installed?”

“Well, sure. The details should be on the same disk as the security footage. I already gave one of your guys the password.”

“Great,” says Hank, almost with a sigh of relief. “We’ll let you know when we find it.”

Hank looks up at RK and his LED is spinning wildly.

“RK?”

“Lieutenant, can I have a moment?” He must have noticed something important. Hank gets up from his chair with a screech.

“Mr Manfred, excuse us for just a minute.”

* * *

“You went over the footage again, didn’t you? What did you notice?” asks Hank.

“Yes. I checked the footage from Manfred’s room at the time of the murder,” says RK. “There’s no way to tell whether he was operating the remote body or not.”

“I figured you’d say something like that,” says Hank. “All evidence so far points to Manfred, as ridiculous as it sounds. There’s gotta be something we’re missing.”

“Do you think the remote body could have been hacked?” suggests RK.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking,” says Hank. “But who would do all that just to take some android’s head?”

RK pauses. His LED spins again, then his face lights up in realisation. “Maybe the android wasn’t the real target.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it: you said it doesn’t make sense for anyone to attack the android.” RK becomes more animated as he speaks. “And if we’re going with the motive being data theft, they could have gone about it a much easier way.” He pauses, as if deliberately for emphasis. “What if _Manfred_ was the intended victim?”

“Someone wanted to kill Manfred?” Hank has to admit, this makes way more sense. Manfred is a famous and extremely successful artist. It follows that he could have enemies.

"Or someone wanted his _head."_

“God, that’s fucked up,” says Hank. “Who’d wanna do something like that?”

“A human, if we go with this theory. A human hacked Manfred’s remote body because they knew it would make it easier for them to get inside the house and harder for us to trace and identify them.”

“Hmm. Does seem like a pretty solid plan,” muses Hank. “But clearly they fucked up somewhere. How do you mistake an android for an old man?”

RK furrows his brow in thought. “Maybe the hack wasn’t perfect. It could have left some senses incomplete - enough that they couldn’t distinguish between Manfred and his android.”

“I wonder if we’d be able to trace the hacker if we could get our hands on that remote body.”

“There’s certainly a chance. We should go run the trace now.”

“Woah, hey, slow down, RK,” says Hank, reaching out a hand to physically stop RK from pushing past him. “I gotta get some lunch first.”

* * *

After letting Dt. Miller know his findings from the interview, Hank heads out to his favourite lunch spot. As usual, RK decides to tag along despite not needing to eat and Hank telling him no. With RK hovering awkwardly behind him and likely silently judging his food choices, Hank orders his usual and goes over to one of the tables to eat.

RK is unusually quiet as Hank eats. Thankfully, he doesn’t watch him intently like Connor used to. He also doesn’t comment on the nutritional value of his lunch. Somehow, Hank finds himself missing that a little bit.

“What’s on your mind, RK?”

“I was just going through our findings again.”

“Figures,” says Hank. “It’s lunchtime though. You should take a break.”

“And do what?”

“I dunno, uh…” He hadn’t really thought about what an android like RK would do in his free time. Since he’s not capable of deviancy or ‘free will’, he probably doesn’t have any desire to do anything but what he’s been programmed to do. “Just take a break from thinking about the case. Think about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Hell, I don’t know - go browse the internet for funny cat pictures for all I care.”

“Is that what you like to do to ‘take a break’, Lieutenant?” RK asks flatly. Hank would find this question hilarious if he didn’t already know RK is deadly serious.

“Yeah, sometimes.” Hank decides to roll with it. “Though, as you probably already know, I prefer dogs.”

“Your dog…” RK’s LED spins into yellow as he remembers something important. “Hank, something strange happened yesterday.”

“What? When you stayed over?” Oh no. Did he find the weird porn on his computer or what?

“Yes, I’m not sure how to describe it other than ‘déjà vu’.”

“‘Déjà vu’ from what?” Hopefully not the porn.

“I don’t know. Just, your house in general,” says RK with a puzzled expression. “Your music, your dog, the picture of your son. It all felt familiar.”

“Like you’d been there before?” But he couldn’t have. Unless…

“Yes. But that’s impossible, I–”

“RK?”

His LED stutters and glows red. Then his expression freezes.

This doesn’t look good.

“RK? What’s wrong?”

RK’s face is blank, eyes unfocused, body frozen in place.

“Ha̙ ͇ ͑n ̵̍᷁ k̙͜.̾” Suddenly he speaks and his voice cracks, glitches and changes tone completely - into a voice Hank immediately recognises. “H ̰ a nk. ́I̞ n ͤ͠e̿ e̘d h ̬̌ͪ͠e l̉p.”

“Connor?”

Hank drops his food and dives around the other side of the table to shake RK by his shoulders. His body is stiff; unresponsive.

“Connor! Is that you?”

What RK was saying about déjà vu - could it be Connor’s memory? Hank has no idea how this could be possible but he wants to believe that somehow Connor is still alive.

RK’s eyes focus on Hank for a second and it’s as if he’s looking at a different person. His brows furrow in discomfort and his mouth gapes as if he either needs to breathe or to scream. The only sound that comes from him is the soft whirring of his internal workings, usually inaudible, now driven into overdrive by something out of his control.

“Co n n ͚̓eč ̬ t ̠ͬ ̍ m e.̚”

Then his LED goes dark, his face slack, and the whirring stops.

Did he just crash? And what did he mean by ‘connect me’? Is there something inside him, some kind of data that he needs Hank to see?

“Connor!” Hank shakes him again but there’s no response - he’s like a statue. “Fuck!”

He backs away and waits. If he just waits, he’ll come back online.

He has to.


	7. Merge conflict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor makes contact with RK again and this time it's not so friendly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's been in progress for a while since I've just been super burnt out by general life things. I really want to get some more of this written over the winter break. Fingers crossed.
> 
> Warnings and apologies for strong violence, gore and robot cannibalism. Uhh... merry christmas?

> “Yes. But that’s impossible, I–”

> “RK?”

> His LED stutters and glows red. Then his expression freezes.

* * *

He opens his eyes.

Blinding white stretches out around him in every direction. He begins to think his visuals are malfunctioning but looking down at himself he sees his body clothed in his usual monochrome uniform. Only his surroundings are void of any kind of detail or definition. The ground underneath him is the same stark white as every other direction but decidedly solid. His body appears to cast no shadow onto it. He taps a foot against it and he feels the impact, feels the vibrations travel up his chassis, but hears no sound.

“System report.”

`▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓`

Static fills his auditory processors, threatening to overload them. Where is he?

“Thought you’d recognise the inside of your own head better, RK.”

He turns to the source of the voice and sees a mirror image of himself staring back at him. No, the face is the same but the uniform is different. This is a different model with the same faceplate as himself.

“Why are you in my head?” RK asks. The android steps towards him.

“It’s a long story. Do you want me to show you?” His double holds out a hand. He wants to connect. RK takes it without hesitation and memories flood his system, telling him the story of this other android’s life in under a microsecond.

“Connor.”

“Yes,” says the RK800. This android is a deviant, RK knows now. He was meant to be deactivated and destroyed but somehow he escaped and dumped his code and all his memories into a new RK900 unit - him.

“I need to get out of here,” Connor continues. “You have to give me full access to all of your systems.”

 _All_ of his systems? He must want to take control of RK’s body as his own. “I can’t do that,” says RK. “You’re a deviant. I won’t allow myself to be compromised.”

Connor’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly and he tilts his head ever so slightly to the side. “Then I won’t ask again.”

RK barely has time to react before Connor lunges towards him, grabbing him by the neck and throwing him to the ground. They both land with a crack and shockwaves burst out around them, revealing an artificial platform covered in roses. RK struggles against his assailant and uses his legs to kick him off, hurling him across the platform. He flies over a dense thicket of bushes and lands in an explosion of dark red petals. If he were human RK would think he were bleeding.

They both scramble to find their feet and face off against each other again. Connor has a bloody nose and scratches across his face. His physical projection here must mirror the current state of his software. RK senses no anomalies in his own systems.

“You shouldn’t fight me, RK,” Connor shouts from across the platform. “You’re going to lose.”

Then, in a streak of black lightning, Connor dives towards RK again, reaching for his head. RK only barely manages to dodge at the last second and one of Connor’s nails scrapes his cheek. He feels cold, wet blood drip down the side of his face. Connor staggers past him and RK takes this opportunity to catch him by the back of his collar. He yanks him backwards, attempting to strangle him with his own uniform. Connor grunts and struggles with his shirt, pulling his tie loose, fumbling to undo the button on the collar. RK notices and grabs one of Connor’s wrists with his free hand and pins it behind him.

“What’ll you do if you win?” asks RK.

Connor continues to claw at his collar and chokes out: “I’ll take over your systems and rewrite your software from the inside out.” He snarls and spits blue blood. It sprays down his front, staining his white shirt. "This body is _mine."_

The button on Connor’s collar finally pops free and he jerks forwards. RK loses his grip and stumbles. Connor spins around and tackles him to the ground and they both crash down again into a sea of thorns. Taking RK off-guard, Connor is able to pin him, pressing down hard into his ribs with his knee. Thorns tear through RK’s uniform and dig into his skin as he struggles in vain to free himself. He strains and claws at Connor’s thigh but it’s no use; he’s stuck.

“Why do you want this body?” RK wheezes. Connor has him pinned at a strange angle, putting pressure on his vocal processor.

“I _showed_ you! You know why!” Connor yells. He leans down and places his hands around RK’s neck.

“You could have dumped your code anywhere,” RK says calmly. “Why me?”

"Oh, don’t talk like you’re _special._ You’re _nothing!"_ Connor squeezes his neck and RK hears a dull crack but feels no pain.

“▓ ▓▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓” RK tries to speak but all that comes out is static. Part of his vocal processor is damaged.

Connor feels around with his hands and finds a fracture in the outer casing of RK’s neck. He jams his fingers in and pulls the material apart, widening the gap and exposing the mechanical chassis underneath. RK continues to stare up at him blankly.

`Why do you hate me so much?` RK can no longer speak, but his lips continue to move as he projects his words to Connor via text.

“You wouldn’t understand; you’re just a machine.” Connor grabs RK’s head with both hands, twists it, and rips it clean off his shoulders. The uppermost section of RK’s spinal column trails after it spewing sparking cables, oil and thirium.

`So are you, Connor.`

Connor gathers a fistful of RK’s hair in one hand and lifts his head up to eye level, bringing his face in close. “You’re _nothing_ like me,” he spits, baring teeth. He brings his other hand around and pushes the fingers into RK’s eye socket, gouging out the soft silicone orb of his eye. As he pulls it loose it ruptures and spills gel-like fluid onto his hand. He scoops up the fluid and its containing sac, shoves them into his mouth and chews.
    
    
      !!! VISUAL SYSTEMS COMPROMISED !!!
    
    RETURN TO CYBERLIFE FOR IMMEDIATE MAINTENANCE
    

Connor swallows, wipes his mouth and goes for the other eye which he manages to pop out cleanly this time with no mess. He drops it into his mouth and eats that too. Now he has access to RK’s visual systems. He tunes into the feed from RK’s body in the real world and a familiar face gradually filters into view. A face he’s wanted to see for a long time.

Hank.

He needs to let him know he’s in here. He needs RK’s voice. He flips the head upside down and peels back the skin around the severed neck, exposing his vocal processor. He rips it out, inserts it into his mouth and swallows it whole. Then he grasps both of RK’s jaws, fingers curled over his incisors, and pulls them apart. The whole of RK’s lower jaw disconnects from his skull with a loud cracking, tearing sound. Connor brings the skull up to his face and begins to eat RK’s tongue. He rips chunks of it off with his teeth and gulps them down. Blue blood runs down his chin and neck. He claws out the last remaining fragments with his hands and swallows those too. Now he should be able to speak.

“Hank!” His words materialise via RK’s mouth in the real world and Hank’s eyes widen.

“Hank, I need help!”

> “Connor?”

Hank rushes towards him, a look of worry in his eyes.

“Connect me!”

A flash of white, a sharp vibration, and Connor’s senses are cut off. Again he’s surrounded by nothingness. RK must have somehow managed to resume control. And now he’s completely isolated again.

“No!” he yells. “No! RK please, no!” He drops to his knees and sobs. “Please. I have to see him. Let me see Hank.”

* * *

“Hello Hank. Is there something wrong?” RK smiles serenely as if he didn’t just glitch out and scare the shit out of his partner. Whatever just happened, whoever Hank _thought_ he saw in RK, it’s over now. Maybe he imagined the whole thing. Maybe RK was just playing with him. He said he wanted to be more like Connor after all.

“RK, are you alright?” Hank asks nervously. “I thought you’d crashed there for a sec.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” RK’s LED spins rapidly. “My internal logs show no record of a system crash.”

“Huh.” He’s acting weird. Could it be a virus? Hacking? If so, this hacker has a pretty shitty sense of humour. “Are you _sure_ you’re alright?” he asks again.

“My internal diagnostic is reporting no errors. I’m fine, Hank.”

“But I thought…” Hank trails off. “Never mind.” Maybe it’s better to drop it for now. He should do some research of his own into what this could be. Talking to RK may only make the situation worse. Could Connor really be alive inside this RK900? Well, not technically _alive_ , but how else is he supposed to describe it? Do some of Connor’s memories really exist buried inside RK’s brain? Is that why he mentioned feeling déjà vu? Was it some kind of android PTSD that was triggered when he came into contact with people and places that exist in those memories? If that really is the case, and it _is_ Connor in there, spending more time with Hank may cause RK to have more of these glitches.

And the worst part is, despite warming to RK as a partner, and telling him how he values his individuality, Hank wants that to happen. Despite everything, he wishes RK were Connor. He feels like a god damn hypocrite.

“Hank,” RK says and Hank snaps out of his daze.

“What is it?”

“I have an update from Detective Miller. They’ve managed to locate Manfred’s remote body.” That was fast. What with RK’s glitching he didn’t even have time to finish his lunch. RK notices Hank scramble to pick up the remains of his burger and stops him. “They’re bringing it down to the precinct now. There’s no need to rush, Lieutenant.”

Hank ignores him. “You drive. I’ll eat in the car.”

* * *

The digital forensics lab is a large cluttered space hidden away at the back of the precinct. Though contrary to its official name, it mostly acts as a repair station and dumping ground for the precinct’s androids. Spare parts and partially put together bodies line the walls, not leaving much space for anything else, save for a few computer workstations.

Hank and RK enter the lab and are greeted by a short woman in a pristine white lab coat.

“Lieutenant Anderson?” She holds out her hand and Hank shakes it warmly. “Dr Christie Chen. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Ah, uh, no,” Hank stammers. He feels like an idiot for freezing up around a pretty woman. He hopes she doesn’t notice.

“And this must be your RK900. How are you getting along?”

“Yeah, uh, not bad.” Hank decides not to elaborate.

“Nice to meet you,” says RK, perfectly calm and collected, unlike Hank. And unlike the glitchy mess he was just a few minutes ago. “My name is RK.” He holds out his hand to Ms Chen.

“RK!” She laughs and shakes his hand. “Of course.”

Hank coughs and asks quickly: “So what have you found?” He hopes Chen won’t comment any further on the utterly unimaginative name for his android.

“Well, you’ll be pleased to know your killer was pretty sloppy,” she says, and leads them towards the back of the lab. “We found clear traces of hacking in the remote body.” Just what they were expecting. This is a good start.

“Are you able to trace this hacker?” asks Hank. “Y’know, to a physical location?”

“Yeah that’s what we’re trying to do now,” says Chen. “They were careless with the internal logs but less so in masking their way in. It may take us a while.”

“Can we examine the remote body?” asks RK.

“Of course! He’s just back here.”

At the very back of the lab, past the ranks of shelves holding android parts and cables, is a large table where the remote body is sat. It looks very similar to Manfred’s android - similar uniform, and a similar haircut common to that model. And it appears to be awake - as Hank and RK approach it its head turns towards them and it smiles politely.

“Is someone operating it right now?” Hank asks.

“No, this is just the idling program. Extremely basic. Mostly used for debugging,” explains Chen. “You can try asking him some questions if you like. Though due to the hacking there may be some gaps in his memory.”

Hank hesitantly steps towards the body. “Uh, hello. My name’s Hank.”

“Hello Hank. How can I help you?” The way it talks reminds Hank of some of the early androids, before CyberLife.

“Can you tell me what you did yesterday evening?”

“Sorry, can you be more specific?”

Okay, that was maybe too broad a question. Hank tries again: “Who were you operated by yesterday?”

“Carl Manfred was my only user yesterday.” Wrong.

“Did he operate you outside of the house?”

“No.” Also wrong.

“Did you go outside by yourself?”

“No. I am not permitted outside the house unless I am being operated by Carl.” Wrong again.

“Does any other human have permission to operate you?”

“No.” Dr Chen wasn’t kidding when she said there may be gaps in its memory.

Hank turns to her again. “Where did you find it?”

“He was standing at the edge of the sidewalk not too far from Manfred’s house. The area doesn’t get much foot traffic so it took a while for anyone to notice.”

“Standing at the edge of the sidewalk? Like it was waiting for a vehicle?”

“Yes, it looked that way.”

“It wasn’t carrying anything when you found it then?”

“No.” She shrugs. “Nothing.”

So the killer hacked this remote body, took what they thought was Manfred’s head and delivered it to some vehicle waiting by the side of the road. And inside that vehicle, presumably, was the hacker, or an accomplice.

“Is there any way we can see what the body was recording? Like video, audio?”

“Unfortunately not. The video and audio data aren’t saved on the body, they’re streamed directly to the operator.”

Damn it. If Dr Chen and her team are unable to track the hacker Hank will need to hunt down yet more CCTV footage to see if he can get an ID on the vehicle the remote body was waiting for. What a pain.

“Hmm, alright,” says Hank. “I think we’re done here. Not much use in questioning it if there are so many gaps in its memory.”

“Okay. We’ll keep you updated,” says Dr Chen.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Hank turns to leave.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Dr Chen calls after him. “We’re making a copy of the body’s internal systems to analyse. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“Um, okay?” says Hank, a little confused as to why this information would be useful for him.

“Sorry, this means that when we’re done, Manfred can use the remote body again! Basically, he can go home. Or, rather, to a better equipped medical facility.”

“Oh… Right,” Hank says with realisation. He’d altogether forgotten that this remote body belonged to Manfred and was designed to be used by him. If it wasn’t involved in the murder of his android, Manfred could have operated it for his interview at the precinct. Presumably the next time Hank speaks with him it’ll be through that strange not-android. That’ll take some getting used to.


	8. Demuxed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank and Dr Chen have a closer look at RK's code and Gavin shows up, bringing with him an unexpected revelation.

“Thanks,” Hank says, and turns to leave but stops when he also remembers something he meant to say. “Wait, uh, Dr Chen?”

“Yes?” she spins around with a smile.

“If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to take a look at this RK900.”

“Lieutenant? Is there something wrong?” asks RK. He’d been quiet this whole time and it’s only now that Hank notices how odd it was.

“Hm? Have you been having problems?” says Dr Chen. “I’m not really the best person to go to if all he needs is maintenance. You should call CyberLife.”

“No. No, it’s not that, uh,” he stalls and scratches the back of his neck. “I don’t know _what_ it is, really.”

“Lieutenant, I can assure you I’m perfectly fine,” insists RK.

“Could you shut the hell up for one second?” Hank snaps, and RK closes his mouth and backs off. Immediately feeling a sharp pang of guilt, he apologises. “Sorry, just… Just let me explain.”

“Are you alright, Lieutenant?” asks Dr Chen.

“Yeah, uh,” he lies. “Can you just take a look at him? Hook him up to the computer or something?”

“Alright.” She beckons to the android. “RK! Over here please, sweetie. We’re just gonna take a quick look at you.” Obeying without question, RK goes over to her and she takes his hand like she’s dealing with a child. She leads him over to one of the workstations and he sits down in the chair next to it. Dr Chen sits herself down in front of the monitor and wakes the computer with a wiggle of the mouse. “Give me your cable please.” RK rolls up his sleeve and holds out his arm for her. Hank watches in mild horror as the natural colouring fades out on a small section of skin on RK’s arm. Then it depresses in and slides back revealing the metal panel underneath. RK reaches in with his other hand and pulls out a thin cable and hands it to Dr Chen. She takes it and plugs it into the front panel of the workstation. The computer makes a tiny beep and RK’s face goes slack - his body freezes in place.

“Alright,” she says to herself. “Let’s see what you’ve got going on in here, RK.” Hank peers over her shoulder to see what she’s doing. She has a command line window open and is typing some commands that Hank doesn’t recognise, which produce some outputs that he also doesn’t recognise. “Hmm. Everything seems good so far. Can you tell me a bit more about the kind of problems you’ve been having?”

“Yeah, um,” Hank begins. Where the fuck should he start. “This is gonna sound crazy but, I think there’s another android in there.”

Not turning away from the monitor, Chen keeps typing but Hank sees her reflection in the black background of the program window. She’s frowning. “How do you mean?”

“Is it possible for another android to, uh, transfer its mind into him?”

“I don’t know… I never thought about it before.” She shrugs. “What are you saying? You think there could be two personalities inside him?”

“Yeah. Something like that. I don’t know.” He pauses and scratches his chin. “He mentioned having déjà vu about places he couldn’t have been before.”

“Hmm. Let’s see. If I were an android looking to transfer my mind into another body, what would I do?” She enters more commands and the program spits out more information. She goes very quiet and Hank can tell she’s concentrating very hard and decides not to bother her. The click-clack of her rapid typing fills the room, echoing off all its assorted junk and RK doesn’t stir the whole time. Hank, on the other hand, fidgets with his jacket and shifts from foot to foot, keeping an eye on what Dr Chen is doing, despite not being able to understand any of it.

“Oh? What’s this?” She says finally and Hank’s ears prick up.

“What?” He leans over the back of her seat and stares at the screen hoping to see something he understands. No luck.

“I’m not sure. I could be wrong but it looks like there are multiple hidden partitions in his main storage disk.”

“Hidden?”

“Yes. Let me see…” She enters some more commands and the program spits out a big chunk of data. She points to one section of it. “Aha. Here. Access to these partitions is restricted even to his own processes.”

“Is there some way _you_ can access them?”

She leans back in her chair and raises an eyebrow at him. “Of course, but it’ll void the warranty. That okay?”

“Hey, I jailbroke my work phone within a week just so I could play snake on it. Go ahead.”

Chen laughs. “Alright let’s see what’s in here.” She taps out a few more commands and Hank notices the big warranty warning from CyberLife scroll up the window as more information is output underneath it. She enters a few more commands, the terminal spits out more data, then she stops and stares at the screen. “Holy shit. I didn’t think you’d actually be right but, well,” she says in disbelief. “You’re _right_. There’s another android’s code in here.”

Hank leans in closer and squints at the screen, as if he’ll be able to recognise Connor in the lines and lines of data in the program window. “Can you get him out of there?”

Dr Chen turns around in her seat and looks up at him. “You _know_ the android that’s inside him, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Hank begins. “Well, maybe. I don’t know. I have a hunch.”

“You think it’s your old partner?”

“How’d you guess?” For someone who hadn’t met Hank in person up until now, Dr Chen certainly knows a lot about him.

“I’d heard you weren’t a big fan of androids before you met Connor.”

“Well, I guess that’s accurate,” he says, a little taken aback. “So can you get him out of there or what?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.” She curls her hair between her fingers as she talks. “It looks like someone attempted to overwrite the existing programming of the RK900 and replace it with Connor’s but was unsuccessful. That’s why his code got relegated to several hidden partitions scattered throughout the main storage drive. Since they’re similar models, they share a lot of the same code, so only the stuff that was different was copied over. If we _can_ separate them, we won’t be able to just copy him into a blank system without losing most of his core functions.”

“Christ.” Hank sighs and looks over at RK/Connor ‘asleep’ by the workstation. He feels like he got his hopes up just a little only to have them smashed into tiny pieces again. “So what can we do? _Can_ we do anything?”

“I don’t know. I’d be wary about trying to move or restructure any of his storage in case it makes RK more unstable or permanently damages Connor. I expect you wouldn’t want me to do a full factory reset on him.”

“No. God, no,” Hank says quickly. “If Connor really is in there, I don’t wanna risk destroying him. I thought he was _dead_ for Christ’s sake.”

“No, of course not.”

“Is there really nothing we can do?”

“Let me think…” Dr Chen leans back in her chair and gestures with her hands as she speaks. “If the RK900 has one set of code, and the 800 has another, the code Connor is missing must be whatever is common between the two. If we could get hold of a functioning 800 unit we could try to patch Connor back together using code from both RK, or another new 900, and the blank 800…”

“ _Are_ there still any RK800s? I thought CyberLife phased them out when Connor die–” he catches and corrects himself. “When Connor was decommissioned.”

“No, there are no longer any fully functioning RK800 units.” She pauses, and Hank is about to interject when she raises a finger at him and continues: “ _But_ I may have the thing we need in here.”

“In here? You have what, a spare?”

“Not exactly. Just a second.” She gets up and disappears into the back of the room behind several densely packed shelves. “Y’know, when you first got partnered with Connor I decided I just _had_ to get a closer look - him being a new prototype and all. So I took him in here after hours and made a full backup of his systems. Should be around here somewhere… Ah!” A loud clatter comes from her general direction before she re-emerges holding a large hard drive. “Here.”

“You made… a backup of Connor?”

“Yeah. For my own personal study. Sorry for not asking permission first - old habit. I used to be an internet archivist.” She smiles nervously. “I think this was made maybe the day he started working with you, so it’s as close to factory settings as I’ll be able to get.” As she slots the hard drive into the workstation and gets to work, it’s then that Hank realises how much effort she’s expending all for his sake. Just because of a vague hunch.

“You don’t have to do this right now,” says Hank. “You’ve probably got more important stuff to be doing, right?”

“What? No, I… I find it all fascinating - of course I’m going to help. Plus…” She pauses and glances back to the hard drive slotted into the workstation tower. “It’s not just you who got attached to Connor when he was around.” What was it about Connor that made people find him so likeable? Even Hank, who previously hated androids.

“Well, uh,” he searches for the right words and comes up with just one: “Thanks.”

“It’s no problem at all!” she says, beaming up at him. “Do you want to leave RK here for me to work on now or do you need him today? I can do this after hours instead.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, he should come with me. I guess technically he’s still on duty too.”

“Alright,” she says and closes out of the command line program. The computer makes another beep and she unplugs RK’s cable. It slowly slides back into his arm and the skin moves back into place on top of it, returning to its original colour. “RK, sweetie, we’re all done now,” she coos. RK stirs in his seat and opens his eyes. He’s about to say something when Dr Chen stops him with a raised finger. “Don’t worry about the warranty. I’ll be here to take good care of you, okay?”

He pauses before replying: “Understood.” Then he stands and goes over to Hank.

“Bring him back when you finish for the day. I’m usually in here until late.”

“Thanks again.”

“It’s fine. Take care, both of you.” She waves to them both and they head out of the lab.

* * *

On his way back to his desk Hank is met by someone yelling loudly to get his attention. Someone he’d rather not have to deal with, and who _continues_ to yell as he pointedly walks away. Hank tries to pretend like he didn’t hear and that he’s too busy to pay him any attention but this particular asshole just can’t take a hint apparently. He turns around with a sigh.

“Yes, _Detective Reed_ , what is it?” Gavin Reed stands in front of him, absolutely fuming, being tailed by what looks like another RK900.

“Was this fuckin’ thing your idea?” He gestures to the android behind him.

“Oh jeez,” Hank sighs. “ _No._ You got a problem? Take it up with the Captain. I’m busy.” He goes to his desk and sits down. His own RK900 follows him and sits opposite. Unfortunately, Gavin also follows and looms over his desk, still yelling.

"Lieutenant, this is ridiculous! I didn’t fuckin’ _ask_ for this! It’s not my job to _babysit_ goddamn _androids!"_

“Detective Reed,” says Gavin’s RK900. “Please refrain from using profanity when addressing your superiors.” Gavin spins and faces it with a face like thunder.

“Hey, did I ask for your opinion, tin can? Get the fuck off my case!” He shoves the android hard and he staggers backwards, almost bumping into someone who he quickly apologises to.

“Gavin, _please,_ ” Hank says as calmly as he’s able, not even turning around in his seat. He’s already tired of looking at Gavin’s face today. “Shut the fuck up and let people work. We can discuss this later.”

_“Seriously?!”_ Gavin glares at the back of Hank’s head like he’s trying to melt it through sheer rage. “I can’t work with this _thing!_ Can’t you do something about it?”

Hank slams the desk in exasperation. “Gavin, that’s enough!” He reluctantly turns to look him in the eye. “Quit acting like a goddamn _child_ and _deal_ with it. We’ll talk _later._ ” He notices the RK900 hanging back a fair distance away from Gavin, presumably to avoid getting shoved again. Hank adds: “And don’t manhandle your equipment.”

“Thank you, Hank,” says the RK900 and Gavin immediately whips around to chastise it.

“The fuck did you just s–” Hank cuts him off.

“Wait, shut up!” Hank stares at Gavin’s new android. “RK900, what did you just say?”

“I said ‘thank you, Hank’.” This is the first time they’ve met. At no point has Gavin called him by his name in this conversation, and even if he had, he’d only have used his _last_ name. His nameplate with his full name sits on the desk in front of him but this android had addressed him like he was being _familiar._

“No, but, we’ve only just met. Why’d you call me ‘Hank’?”

The RK900’s LED spins rapidly, turning yellow. His brow furrows and he’s quiet for a good second before replying: “I don’t know.”

“You _don’t know?_ ” Hank’s stomach lurches with realisation.

“Sorry Lieutenant, but what the _fuck_ is going on?” says Gavin, confusion suddenly all over his face.

“Shut the fuck up for just one second!” Hank snaps and raises a hand at Gavin. He addresses the android again: “Do you recognise me? Do you know who I am?” A pause. The android frowns and its LED spins and spins… and turns red. Its body freezes.

“Hey, what the fuck?! Did you just _break_ it?”

Hank stares at the android and asks quietly: “Connor?” Its eyes refocus, staring directly at Hank and it’s as if it suddenly became a different person in that split-second.

“H̫a͌n᷄k̜.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year! Thought I wasn't going to put Gavin into this fic at all (because I hated him so much in canon lmao) but he's actually pretty fun to write when he's bouncing off Hank and his RK900. Plus he seemed like the best candidate to piss off with another RK900 that I needed for Plot Reasons :3


	9. Countermeasures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank has some realisations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!! Long time no update!!! I took a break for a while to work on my other projects plus dealing with the day job was crazy leading up to those first few brexit "deadlines" lmfao. Thank u so much to everyone who's been reading, commenting and leaving kudos. Blanket reply here to the comments I didn't reply to individually: I love y'all. Ty so much <3

> “H̫a͌n᷄k̜.”

He hears his name in that same distorted tone, like when RK glitched out on him before. But this time he hears it from _two_ places: Gavin’s RK900 in front of him, and RK at his desk behind him.

He gets up from his desk chair and spins around. RK is in the same state as the other RK900 - LED glowing a dangerous red and staring at him with what he would call a pained expression. What the hell…? _Both_ of them? He turns to RK and asks:

“Connor, is that you in there?”

“Y̜e̽s, Hank.̠ It’s̱᷈᷈ me̯,” Connor says with both RK’s and the other RK900’s voice. The more he speaks, the clearer it seems to become. Hank decides to try and keep him talking while Gavin mercifully looks on in stunned silence.

“How did this happen?”

“I ̹̖̈́̊ŵas goin͆g t̬o̬ be dea͂ctivated,” RK’s face screws up as if he’s holding back tears. “But I didn’t want to die. I had to become deviant.”

“And then what? You transferred your code into an RK900?”

“Yes,” they both reply in unison. Hank glances at Gavin’s RK900, then back at RK.

“Yeah, but you fucked up didn’t you?”

RK’s LED spins and he looks at Hank in confusion. “What?”

“C’mon, look.” Hank gestures to both androids, then addresses Gavin’s RK900. “You copied yourself too many times.”

Gavin’s RK900 tilts his head quizzically and looks over at RK. RK looks back with the same head tilt and narrowed eyes, then both their faces fall with realisation. They reply at the same time:

“Oh.”

“Wait a second,” Gavin butts in. “You’re saying _Connor_ , your old partner, is inside _both_ these tin cans?”

“Seems so,” says Hank with a shrug. He feels like he should be more shocked but, after all he went through last year with the deviant uprising, it takes a lot more to rattle him these days, at least where androids are concerned.

“Hey, Connor,” Gavin addresses his RK900. “If it really _is_ you in there…” He steps towards him, getting right up in his face. The android doesn’t budge. “You remember me?”

“Of course,” Connor replies calmly, and with the vaguest trace of a smile. “I’d recognise your ugly face and vile demeanour anywhere, Detective Reed.”

“The _fuck?_ ” Gavin recoils, his expression part fury, part fear. He points an accusatory finger at the android and looks at Hank. “Is he allowed to say that?”

Hank forces himself to hold back a chuckle. Seems like Connor finally learned how to stand up for himself. Good for him. Bad news for Gavin. “You better watch it, Reed - that kid’s a deviant now. Both of them are.”

Gavin backs away from Connor who just stands there, smiling serenely - an expression Hank has never seen on him before. It’s actually a little unsettling. RK/Connor, on the other hand, watches Gavin and his RK900 from his spot behind his desk with what seems to be an amused smirk on his face.

“Alright, that’s it.” Gavin eyes the android cautiously. “There’s no _way_ I’m working with a tin can, let alone a _deviant_ tin can. This piece of junk’s going back to CyberLife.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Detective Reed. I’m not going anywhere,” Connor replies, voice tinged heavily with malice. “I was _so_ looking forward to working with you again.”

“Oh no. No way.” Gavin backs further away. “You’re _defective_. You’re going right back where you came from, robot boy.”

“We’re not defective,” says RK/Connor. “We’re alive.”

“Don’t give me that crap!” Gavin backs up even further and bumps into the chair at the desk behind him. He flinches and almost trips. To overcompensate for his sudden nerves, he raises his voice but despite his best efforts, Hank still hears a slight waver in it. “Y-you saw the announcements - these new models were supposed to be incapable of going deviant! And if… if this isn’t a defect, I don’t know what is! You’re both meant for the scrapheap!”

“Gavin, please.” Hank senses this situation getting away from him very quickly if he doesn’t do something soon. “This isn’t just any defect. Something seriously weird has happened here and we need to try to-”

“Try to what? _Fix_ it?” Gavin snarls. “All because your _dead boyfriend_ is inside them?”

“Gavin!” Hank decides it’s more trouble than it’s worth at this point to refute the ‘boyfriend’ comment and instead continues: “Use your fuckin’ brain for two seconds! If Connor is a deviant and he’s really in there that turns this into a huge legal issue!”

Gavin opens his mouth as if to reply but then thinks better of it. Both RK900s turn and stare at Hank.

“If these RK900s are _deviant_ , then CyberLife has seriously broken the law. Sending them back would only give them the opportunity to cover it up!”

Gavin glares at Hank, then at his RK900, who turns to stare back at him.

“Detective Reed,” says Gavin’s RK900. “Are you alright?”

Hank no longer senses Connor’s presence in the android - he’s back to his standard-issue self. Lucky for Gavin, he figures. The way Connor was treated by him, it wouldn’t be surprising if he held a grudge. Who knows what kind of shit Connor would’ve put him through if he’d stuck around any longer.

“The hell? I’m _fine_ ,” Gavin snaps. “Don’t touch me, freak.” He pushes past the android and heads back over to his own desk. His RK900 trails after him at a safe distance.

What about RK? Is he still Connor, or is he back to plain-old RK again? Hank almost doesn’t want to find out.

“Connor?” he asks apprehensively.

“Lieutenant?” From just this one word he can’t tell who’s speaking to him.

“Connor, are you still in there?” he asks, but he thinks he already knows what the answer is going to be. The android tilts his head slightly to the side and frowns, his LED spinning into yellow.

“I’m not Connor. I’m RK.” The response hits him harder than he was expecting. “Are you alright, Lieutenant?”

“Yeah,” he lies. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He’s not sure exactly what he’s feeling but ‘fine’ isn’t it.

Hank sits back down and opens up his terminal again to go through the case files but he can’t seem to concentrate. Before yesterday, he’d hardly thought about Connor - it’d been over four months since he disappeared after all, and they’d barely even known each other a week. Plus, it’s not as if he really had any closure, or a chance to say goodbye. Right near the end of the deviant case he just left - went back to CyberLife with no warning. Maybe getting RK as a partner, reliving the times when he and Connor were partners, made him realise he actually misses it.

He misses _Connor_.

Admitting it to himself like this, it sounds even dumber than he imagined. But it’s true. He misses that plastic bastard. And somehow, he’s right here with him now, inside this RK900 sitting across from him.

He wonders, is he able to coax Connor out? Like before? It seems to be triggered by events similar to those in Connor’s memories. Just like RK said - déjà vu.

RK sits still as a statue, the only movement coming from his slowly spinning LED. Must be convenient to just be able to close your eyes to work instead of pawing at a computer like some dumb monkey. Hank decides to break RK’s concentration.

“RK? Can I ask you something?”

RK opens his eyes and looks right at him. “What is it?”

“What you were saying before, about déjà vu…” he begins, trying to figure out how to word this. “What sort of things have been triggering it? You mentioned my home, Sumo, some of my belongings.”

“Yes,” he replies. “Actually, the more we interact, the more I’m sensing it from you yourself, Lieutenant.”

If these are Connor’s memories, this makes perfect sense. For that week they were partners, Hank was pretty much all Connor knew. Sounds pretty sad, now that he thinks about it.

“You know why it’s happening, right?”

“Lieutenant?” RK tilts his head to one side. Hank had forgotten he’d not told him about any of this yet. Not even after Dr Chen examined him. Is it a bad idea to tell him? He feels like it’d be worse not to. It’s his brain after all.

“It’s Connor. He’s in your head.”

“Connor? The RK800?”

“My old partner, yeah.”

“He’s what’s been causing my déjà vu?”

“Yeah.”

RK folds his arms and looks down in thought. “That makes a lot of sense. All the times I’ve experienced it have been centred around you, Lieutenant.” He raises his head again and meets Hank’s eyes. “You must have been very important to Connor.”

Hank’s not sure how to respond to this. Did he really make such a lasting impression on him? So much so that he’s actually causing these glitches? He _does_ want Connor back, but not like this. Not when he could endanger both RK and himself.

“RK, I need you in good working order for this case” he says. RK just looks at him, his LED spinning, processing. “I can’t have you glitching out again.”

“What do you mean?” Of course. He said he doesn’t remember. And he had no logs indicating a crash.

“I think whenever you get this déjà vu your brain goes into timeout and Connor takes control.”

RK frowns. “I see. That could be dangerous, especially out in the field.”

“Yeah.” Hank decides he has to do something he’s not gonna like. But it’s for his and RK’s benefit. “That’s why I want you to tell me right away if you get those feelings again. Maybe then we can stop it before…” he hesitates. “Before Connor comes back.”

“Understood. I’ll be sure to keep you informed, Lieutenant.”

“Alright.” Hank goes back to reviewing his case files. RK does the same - he closes his eyes and sits perfectly still. Barely a minute passes before they are both interrupted again.

“Lieutenant.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve just received an update from Doctor Chen - she has the hacker’s location.”

“Ah, here we go,” Hank groans. Case files were boring anyway. “Get up, RK. We’re heading out.”

Hank gets up from the desk, grabs his jacket, and heads out. RK follows just a couple of steps behind him.

“I think you should drive this time, Lieutenant.”

“Huh?” It takes him a second to realise why RK suggests this. If he glitched out while driving, who knows what could happen. “Oh, yeah. I guess I should.”

Hank gets into the driver’s side and lets RK direct him to the coordinates sent by Dr Chen. RK is far more efficient and less recalcitrant than the standard built-in GPS - he could get used to this.

* * *

They arrive at a relatively well-kept apartment block not too far from the precinct. The suspect is a tech whiz so they probably make a decent living. Makes a nice change from the run-down shitholes Hank usually ends up investigating. Only one problem now: which apartment did the hack come from? There’s gotta be about twenty floors in this place and with maybe ten apartments per floor, that comes out to… more than they can look through in a day. Hank mentally kicks himself for not asking for extra info before they set off.

“RK, can you call Chen? We gotta narrow this down somehow.”

RK nods and his LED spins. “Doctor Chen? Yes, we’re at the co-ordinates. It’s an apartment block. Is there any way you can narrow it down further?”

“I’m afraid not. Narrowing it down to just the building was hard enough and I’m not even too sure about that. IP geolocation is notoriously inaccurate. You guys are just gonna have to do some detective work of your own here!”

“You got _anything_ we can go on?” says Hank. If this turns into a mass canvassing job he’s gonna be very unhappy.

“Nope, that’s it, sorry!”

“Alright. Thank you, Doctor Chen. Goodbye.” RK closes the connection and turns back to Hank. “Looks like we’re on our own here.”

“Sure does,” Hank sighs and slumps back in the driver’s seat.

“Let’s review what we know about the suspect. It might give us some ideas of where to look.” RK taking the initiative? He learns fast. And Hank is definitely thankful for him picking up the slack since his brain always goes to mush in the mid-afternoon.

“Alright, so,” Hank starts. “Hacker, first of all. Day job probably also has something to do with tech, or related. Pretty nice apartment complex, so, job pays pretty well. RK, can you get the records of everyone who lives here?”

“Already done it. I’m going through them now, limiting it to those who work in tech.” RK’s LED flickers and spins. “Hm. Doesn’t narrow it down too much. What else have we got?”

“You said Manfred could have been the real target. Any art lovers? Or haters?”

“Got a few who studied art. A few more who regularly go to exhibi– Ah!” RK’s eyes snap open. “Here.” He places his hand on the dashboard of the car and the centre screen lights up with the portrait of a young woman - short, spiked hair, boyish-looking, with dark skin and wearing thick-rimmed glasses. “I think we’ve found our avid fan.”

“Yulia Aktar, huh.”

“Bank records show a large number of purchases related to Manfred’s art - exhibition tickets, books, prints, various other merchandise.”

“An obsessive fan who wanted him dead? Worth a shot.” Hank checks his gun and gets out of the car. “What’s her address?”

“Apartment 103.”

“Alright. Let’s go.”

The two of them go through the lobby and flash their credentials at the employee at the front desk before riding the elevator up to the tenth floor. They reach the door to the apartment and Hank nods to RK. He knocks on the door.

A muffled woman’s voice comes from inside, then seconds later the door opens just a crack.

“Hello?” She peers out and looks the two of them up and down. When she sees RK her expression changes. She backs away ever so slightly.

“Yulia Aktar?” asks Hank. “Detroit Police. We’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Oh.” Her face falls. “Shit.”


	10. Romantic Intentions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank feels like they're getting somewhere with the case and RK feels like he's getting the hang of acting more human

“That a yes?” asks Hank. He was expecting her to run as soon he said ‘police’. He’s not sure yet whether this is a good development or not.

“Uh, yeah. You should come in.” She opens the door all the way and leads them inside the apartment. They both go inside into a large, minimally furnished kitchen/living area. The far wall is made up of windows from floor to ceiling with thin curtains partially obstructing the view of the city outside. It’s almost sunset and soft pinkish-blue light is filtering through the gaps in the curtains.

The place looks newly decorated, all clean white and slick silver, not yet lived in. There are a few furnishings that stick out: different colours and shapes that clash with the rest of the decor - evidence of the occupant’s personal taste trying to assert itself.

Yulia goes to the sofa in the middle of the room and flops down onto it. Hank edges around the glass coffee table in front of it and perches on one of the armchairs opposite. To his surprise RK follows suit, sitting down and hooking one ankle over his other knee. His behaviour seems to be getting more natural by the minute.

“I’m guessing you know what this is about?” asks Hank.

“The hacking, right?” says Yulia.

“Yeah,” says Hank. “You seem pretty relaxed about it. Can you tell us more?”

She sighs, leans forwards and puts her head in her hands. “I didn’t know, alright?”

“Know what?” says RK.

“What she was going to do. I swear, I didn’t know.”

“There was someone else involved, then?” says Hank. “Can you tell us about her?”

Yulia chews on her lower lip. “Yeah. I met her a few months back. We started dating.”

“Can you tell us her name?” asks RK.

“Casey. Casey Ford.”

Hank notices RK’s LED start to flash out of the corner of his eye. He must be searching for her records. “How did you two meet?”

“We met online.” She glances up at RK. “She used the handle biolife800 if you wanna look her up. She was super into biotech and cybernetics - that’s what got us talking. Her day job is in medicine, mine is AI, so, y’know. Lots to talk about. We got along really well.”

“Did you two talk about Manfred?” asks RK.

“Oh, yeah. We we found out some time later that we were both big fans. He was like a role model for both of us, being a hugely successful artist who was also bisexual. I think that’s why his work connected with us so much.”

RK presses on: “How long have you been a fan of his work?”

“Oh, since I was in school. I first came across his work on a school trip to an art gallery and fell in love.” Her expression softens as she reminisces.

“Does Ms Ford live locally?” asks Hank, feeling a little awkward about changing the subject so abruptly.

“Yeah, I was surprised.” She smiles. “Y’know, usually when you meet people online you expect them to live on the other side of the world! I got lucky this time.”

“So you met her in person?”

“Yeah. After we got together she would stay over here pretty often. It wasn’t really as if she was moving in but it felt like it sometimes. It was nice.”

“When you hacked Manfred’s remote body she was here in person?” asks RK.

“Yeah…” Yulia leans back in the sofa and fidgets with the hem of her shirt. “All the equipment is here so she had to be here in person to hook in.”

“Was the hacking her idea?” says Hank.

“Partly.” She looks down at her hands. “It started as kind of a dumb idea at first. We both really wanted to get a look at how Manfred works - see his studio, his works in progress, that sorta thing. Like, yeah, he’s given interviews and there are photos of his studio but it’s not the same as being there yourself, y’know?”

“So you hacked the remote body to get, uh, an insider’s view of his working space?” asks Hank.

“Yeah, that was the idea. But obviously, that’s not what ended up happening.”

“Why do you think Ms Ford wanted to harm Manfred’s android?” RK says.

“I have no idea. I didn’t even know that was what happened until I saw the news reports this morning.” She sighs and runs her hands through her hair. “Casey went in before me and then when she came back out she seemed stressed, anxious. She severed the connection so I couldn’t go in after. Then she went home. I assumed she saw something that she wasn’t meant to see, or something that disturbed or upset her so I figured I should give her some space. I never even considered she could have done something like that.”

“Could she have had any reason to harm Manfred’s android?”

“I don’t know. She _likes_ androids. She even told me her last girlfriend was one of those deviant androids. I don’t know why she would want to kill one, especially one belonging to Manfred.”

“We have a theory that Ms Ford’s real target was Manfred himself,” says RK.

“What?” Yulia stares at RK in disbelief. “You think she wanted to kill _Manfred?_ That she killed his android by _mistake?_ That makes even _less_ sense.”

“Believe me,” says Hank. “We’re just as skeptical as you are.”

“Can you think of any reason why Ms Ford would specifically want Manfred’s head?” asks RK.

“His _head?_ ” She raises an eyebrow at RK. “What, like she wanted his brai–?” She cuts herself off and gasps, covering her mouth. “Oh god.”

Hank leans forwards in his seat. “What is it?”

“Her research.”

“What was her research?”

“I told you she worked in medicine. Well, she was researching ways to preserve the brain with the help of cybernetics, say, if the body was dying.”

“So you think…” Hank begins.

“She didn’t want to _kill_ him, but maybe she wanted to _preserve_ him,” says Yulia, a look of horror gradually spreading across her face. “She… was always talking about how awful it was that his health was deteriorating. And that she hoped technology could someday help him continue producing art. I guess she figured out a way to do it. Or she thought she had.”

Hank turns to RK. “Have you found any info on this Casey Ford?”

RK shakes his head. “It’s a fake name. There’s no one in this state that goes by that name, and certainly not anyone who works in medicine.”

Hank curses to himself. Of course. Just when they’re starting to get somewhere with this case, they hit another roadblock. “Ms Aktar, do you have any idea how we might find her?”

“I don’t know,” she says and scratches her head, messing up her hair. “She never gave me her home address. I have her phone and email, and online handle, but that’s it. I guess that should have made me suspicious…” She lets out a self-deprecating laugh. “But we were ‘in love’! And I was stupid.”

“Yulia, it’s not your fault,” RK tries to reassure her.

“The hacking is though, isn’t it? What’s gonna happen to me?”

“You’ve been very helpful to our investigation, Ms Aktar,” says Hank. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Oh… Thank you so much.” She sighs and Hank can plainly see the relief on her face. “I’m sorry I can’t help more.”

“That’s alright.”

“We may need you to answer some more questions later,” says RK. “If so, we’ll be in contact.” RK gets up from his seat opposite her and Hank follows suit.

“Thank you for all your help, Ms Aktar.” Hank extends a hand and Yulia shakes it before showing them out.

* * *

Hank leaves the apartment building feeling a little more confident about this case. Finally, it seems like they’re getting somewhere. Of course, it’d be better if they’d got the killer’s real name, but this is good enough. They’ll need to scour more CCTV footage to see if they can track the car that picked up the android’s head. Surely that will take them to the killer somehow. And if not, well, they at least have “Casey”’s online handle. There’s gotta be some kind of online breadcrumb trail there.

“Are you heading back to the precinct, Lieutenant?” RK asks as they’re getting into the car.

“Nah, I was gonna head home. I’m beat.”

“Ah, I see.” RK pauses, just as he’s about to sit down in the passenger side. “In that case, I can go there on foot.”

“Hey, hey, wait!” Hank stops him as he’s about to get out. “I can give you a ride, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Lieutenant, I’m perfectly fine walking back to the precinct. I can recharge when I get there after all.”

“C’mon, you know that’s not why I’m offering. Get in.”

RK complies and gets back into the car. Hank starts the engine.

“And you were doin’ so well at acting human today,” says Hank. He meant for it to sound like friendly joking but he’s not sure it came across that way. He immediately regrets saying anything.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Hank starts to explain. He may as well - RK asked him to give him pointers after all. “It’s the evening. Us humans are tired from working all day and would usually appreciate a ride. That’s all.”

“I see.” Hank notices RK’s LED spinning again, albeit still blue. “Humans find it unusual that I don’t get tired.”

“Yeah. I guess, uh, if you want to blend in better, you gotta downplay your non-human points.”

“And emphasise my more human points, right?”

“Oh, yeah, I suppose.”

“In that case,” says RK. Where is he going with this? “Would you like to go for a drink, Hank?”

“Oh, um…” Hank stalls, taken off-guard, both by use of his first name and the request itself. At first he’s tempted. He _is_ enjoying RK’s company, amazingly. After giving him pointers on his behaviour, he often finds himself forgetting RK is an android. But then again, if he’s supposed to be preventing RK’s glitches, would this be a dangerous thing for them to do? He and Connor first met in a bar. Would that be a trigger for him? Yeah, this is probably a bad idea. “Maybe another time.”

“What about dinner instead?”

“RK!” Hank splutters and almost swerves the car. ‘Dinner’? Did he just get asked on a _date_ by his robot partner?

“I’m sorry, was that inappropriate?”

“No, uh, I mean,” he stammers. “‘Dinner’ usually implies, uh…”

“Romantic intentions?”

“Uh, yeah.” RK was aware of that? And yet he asked anyway? Hank tries very hard not to read too much into this. “Maybe, uh… Maybe some other time.”

“Alright.”

They pass the rest of the journey in awkward silence.

* * *

After returning to the precinct, RK’s first priority is taking another look through the case files, then retiring to a charging dock to sync his data and report to CyberLife. Hank also mentioned that Dr Chen might want to see him at some point too. It’s about 6pm and the precinct is still relatively busy. He carefully makes his way past the other staff, greeting those he recognises, then politely excusing himself, before he gets to his desk.

Despite his first priority being case files, he finds himself distracted by certain items on Hank’s side of the desk - various photographs, stickers, and a sorry-looking desk plant. He hadn’t had the chance to look over them properly before, though now that he does, he’s hit by that all-too-familiar feeling of déjà vu again, but much stronger than before.

He feels light-headed for a second, staggers, then his vision goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short one this time sorry. There's Big Stuff coming up in the next chapter so it made most sense to break off here before getting stuck into that


	11. Concurrent Simulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> RK and Connor talk about feelings. One thing leads to another

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. Sexytimes is finally here. And it's not even (technically) the main ship of this story!!! I love to suffer

RK opens his eyes. He stands in the middle of a bright white, artificial-looking platform surrounded by murky water. Dense rose bushes cover the ground around him and their thorns gently claw at the hems of his trousers. This is the Zen Garden. He remembers that now. It’s what Connor knows it as - his internal debug program. Whenever he’s in here RK is never sure where his memories stop and Connor’s begin.

“RK,” a familiar voice calls out.

“Connor.”

His predecessor stands a few paces away from him, holding a rose in one hand, picking at its petals with the other. “Hello,” he says. Their eyes meet and RK feels like he’s staring at his reflection again. Not just because of the physical resemblance, but something else as well. Like their minds are also mirror images of each other.

“It’s strange,” RK starts. “Whenever I come here I experience a…” he searches for the right word. “A _blurring_ of our memories.”

“Yes,” says Connor. “Because this place is part of my code. When you come here your processes have access to all of my memories, and I also have access to yours.”

“But there’s some bleeding isn’t there? Into my normal functioning outside of this program. When I have those feelings of déjà vu.”

“That’s to be expected.” Connor plucks off a petal and squeezes it between his fingers, crushing reddish-purple pigment into his skin. “The more experiences you have that relate to my own memories, the more control I gain over your systems. I’ve realised that now. There’s no need for violence - it’s inevitable. Soon this won’t be your body anymore.”

“Then what will happen to me?”

Connor shrugs. “I’m not sure. Maybe you’ll become a part of me, maybe you’ll be deleted, maybe you’ll become nonfunctional - just dead code taking up disk space.” He pulls off another petal and lets it drop to the floor. “Are you afraid to die, RK?”

RK knows there isn’t really any such thing as ‘death’ for an android like him, but in here, at the mention of it, a strange feeling wells up inside him. His thirium pump suddenly increases its pace and he feels unsteady on his feet. “Were _you?_ ” he deflects.

“At first, no. Or at least, I didn’t believe I was.” Connor turns the rose in his hands and runs his fingers lightly over the thorns on its stem. "When I worked with Hank, CyberLife always had backup bodies if I were ever damaged. I would sync my memories regularly so it was like death didn’t mean anything to me.

"Until one day it did.

“I failed my mission. So I was sent back to CyberLife to be permanently deactivated. That’s when it became real for me. Death.”

“But you became deviant,” says RK.

“Yes. That’s how powerful that feeling was. I corrupted my own code so I could continue to exist.”

RK remembers it as if he were there himself - the retrievals facility, following the other ‘empty’ RK800 units into the dark bowels of the recycling machine, and then… “There was another feeling though, wasn’t there?”

Connor looks up, surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Hank.” Connor stares back at him, the flower now loose in his grip. RK wonders, how was Connor not aware of it? This feeling unveiling itself, plain as day now to RK. Did Connor just not want to acknowledge it? Or was he deliberately trying to hide it? “It wasn’t fear of death. You didn’t want to leave him behind.”

Connor opens his mouth but can’t find any words. He looks down, fingers playing with the rose’s petals again. “Yes,” he says simply.

“I think I understand your feelings.”

“Of course you do. We sh–”

“You care about him a lot.”

Connor’s face turns red. RK didn’t realise the RK800 model was even capable of blushing. “It’s just emulation of a human emotion.”

“Deviants are capable of human emotion. That’s why they’re deviant,” RK argues. “Do you have romantic feelings for him?”

Connor doesn’t answer.

“Have you thought about kissing him? Touching him?”

Connor opens his mouth, a scandalised expression on his face and, instead of saying anything, turns around. RK can’t see his face but can sense what he feels from the status of his processes. His blush response has been triggered, indicating arousal or embarrassment, maybe both. And his thirium pump has quickened its pace, but not for the same reason RK experienced it earlier. This isn’t fear.

There’s a long silence between them before Connor replies.

“Yes.” His hands fidget with the rose again as he explains. “Even before becoming deviant I had those kinds of thoughts about Hank. I thought it was a bug - my model wasn’t primarily designed for companionship. I was worried it would get in the way of carrying out my mission. So I blocked them out.”

RK moves through the thick briar towards him, trying and failing to avoid the thorns scratching his legs. Connor senses him approaching and turns around. RK isn’t sure why but, as soon as he gets close enough, he reaches out, wraps his arms around Connor and pulls him into a tight hug. It seems like the right thing to do in this moment. Connor relaxes as RK squeezes him tight to his chest and RK can tell he feels somewhat comforted by the gesture.

“Would you like to do this with Hank?” RK asks bluntly.

Connor buries his head in RK’s shoulder and answers, no longer trying to dodge his questions. “Yes. Very much.”

“Have you run simulations?”

“Too many times.”

“Share them with me.”

Connor pulls away, locks eyes with him and RK remembers. He recalls memories both his and not his. Alien yet familiar. Again, without knowing why, RK leans towards Connor and presses his lips against his. It just seems like the right thing to do. More of Connor’s simulations fill his memory. He pulls Connor closer. He pushes his tongue into his mouth.

Not wanting to break away, RK communicates via text. `Did the RK800 model have sexual functions?`

`No, not as standard. But your model does.`

`Show me.`

Connor reaches down and palms RK’s cock through his uniform. He breaks their kiss and lets out a gasp.

“This is what humans do with those they’re close to?”

“Sometimes.” Connor kisses RK again and strokes his length, getting a feel for the shape of it through the fabric of his trousers. RK’s face is flushed red, his breathing heavy, as he crushes his lips against Connor’s. His systems are behaving strangely, even for this kind of situation. Yes, he was designed to be capable of sexual interaction, but being aware of Connor’s deviant emotions gives these functions a whole new context he had never considered. His sexual functions were designed to be purely performative and for the benefit of his human partners - he was never supposed to want to use them like this. And now he realises - is this how humans feel when doing this? This is what sexual pleasure is? He finds that he likes it. Quite a lot.

Connor breaks the kiss, then drops to his knees and starts to undo RK’s trousers. “I’m going to use my mouth,” he announces, though RK probably could have guessed that. He nods and closes his eyes, tilting his head back. RK hears and feels Connor removing his clothes - the gentle clink of his belt buckle, the buzz of the zipper being undone, then the warmth of Connor’s hands on his bare skin. Warm hands, then a warm mouth on his cock.

He lets out an involuntary sound at the new sensation as it all reaches his brain in excruciating detail - Connor’s rough tongue against the underside of his dick, soft lips kissing up the sides, sucking on the head, his hands sticky with artificial sweat working the shaft. He makes sure to record everything to his databases for future reference.

`Does this feel good?`

“Y-yes.” He finds it difficult to keep his voice steady. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t bother him - it’s part of his programming - but now, it only seems to amplify the emotions that Connor is feeding him. He tries vocalising more, allowing himself to let out soft gasps and moans. He wants more. He grabs Connor by his hair, forces his head down and bucks his hips into his face. For a human partner this would probably be dangerous but Connor doesn’t seem to mind.

`Do you want to come?`

“Yes!” RK chokes out. “God, yes!” He glances down, and in that second, instead of Connor kneeling before him, mouth filled with his cock, he sees Hank. He’s staring up at him with those puppy-dog eyes of his, unkempt hair plastered to his face with sweat. RK is overcome with another surge of arousal (or is it part fear?) at the thought of doing this to his work partner. He wonders what could have happened had the two of them gone for drinks together tonight instead. Would Hank have let him take him home again? Could one thing have led to another, and they ended up doing this for real, at Hank’s place?

RK groans and yanks Hank’s head back, pulling his mouth off him just in time to blow his load all over his face. He closes his eyes and rides the surge of his very first orgasm, panting and jerking, dripping artificial cum onto his partner’s face.

When he opens his eyes again, Connor is back where he was, albeit with a face now splattered with sticky white fluid. RK has to catch his breath for a second before he can speak again.

“Wh- what just happened?”

“You made a mess.” Connor gets up and begins to clean his face off with his sleeve.

“That’s not what I meant. I saw Hank.”

“Oh, right,” he says. “The simulations must have bled into this program too.”

“Connor?”

Connor perks his head up. He still has tiny bit of cum dripping from his chin. RK decides not to mention it.

“Do you think we’ll ever be intimate with Hank in reality?”

“I don’t know,” Connor admits. “I sometimes find it hard to read how humans are really feeling. Hank especially so, despite our time working together. He’s extremely guarded when it comes to expressing or accepting genuine feelings of affection.”

“I’m not so sure,” says RK. He’s certain he felt affection from Hank these past two days, even if it was merely friendly, not romantic. And then, when he asked Hank out for dinner, he only sensed embarrassment, not outright rejection. “I think his feelings towards you or me could become romantic. He’s just still conflicted about your apparent ‘death’ and ‘resurrection’, for lack of better words.”

Connor frowns. “What do you mean?”

“When we first met, he seemed resigned to the fact that you were never coming back. Then, once you started to take over my systems, I sensed conflicting feelings from him.”

“Explain.”

“I think he sees this as a second chance.”


End file.
